lirs 


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.^"•^  ;- 


THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 
VOL.  I 


5.  )b.  App^cott  GompaayT 

_, — . 1  ».  t  >  in      r  I  1 1    -  •    -P 


£oi\doi\:  freen\antle  and  Company 


CONTE'NTS 

PAGE 

LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS  vii 

INTRODUCTION  BY  AUSTIN  DOBSON  xi 

CHAPTER  ONE.— Nature  of  the  Place,  its  General  Asso- 
ciations, Name,  and  Growth i 

CHAPTER  Two.— Crystal  Palace— Old  Kensington  Gore 
=.  — Duchess  of  Kingston  —  Marquis  Wellesley  — 
Highest  Ground  between  London  and  Windsor 
Castle — Prince's  Gate — Brompton  Park  Nursery  .  10 

CHAPTER  THREE.  —  Kensington  Gore  Modern  — Mrs 
Inchbald — Count  D'Orsay— Wilkes  and  Junius — 
(Sir  Philip  Francis) 19 

CHAPTER  FOUR.— Gore   House— A  Government  Con- 
tractor— Mr    Wilberforce — Lady    Blessington    and 
00          Count    D'Orsay — Monsieur    Soyer — Exhibition    of 
Cabinet  Work— Cultivation  of  the  Beautiful — Copies 
by  Students 31 

3  CHAPTER  FIVE.— New  National  Gallery— Kensington 
New  Town — Ambitious  Sub-Urbanities — Kensing- 
ton House — Duchess  of  Portsmouth — Elphinstone, 

^          Doctor  Johnson,  etc 58 

CHAPTER  Six. — Kensington    House    continued — Sheil 
and  the  French  School  there — Catholic   Boarding 
Establishment  —  Death    and    Character    of    Mrs 
•  Inchbald 69 

<^  CHAPTER  SEVEN.— High  Street— Colby  House,  and 
Death  of  a  Miser — Kensington  Palace  Gardens — 
The  Rookery — Kensington  Square — Duchess  of 
Mazarin — Blackmore— Bishops  Hough  and  Mawson 
— Archbishop  Herring — Talleyrand  ....  83 

CHAPTER  EIGHT. — Kensington  Church — Burial-grounds 
by  Highways — The  Callcotts — Philip  Meautis — Sir 
Manhood  Penruddock — Addison's  'Earl  of  War- 
wick ' — The  Colmans — Jortin — Thomas  Wright  .  109 


29884O 


vi  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  NINE. — Church  and  Churchyard  continued— 
Madan  and  his  Thelypthora— George  Colman  the 
Elder  —  Dr  Warren  —  Elphinstone  again  —  The 
Bianchis— Mrs  Inchbald— Spofforth— James  Mill — 
George  Colman  the  Younger  —  The  Charnleys — 
Flowers  on  Graves — Urn-Burial  .  .  .  1 1 1 

CHAPTER  TEN.— The  Old  Charity- School  and  Sir  John 
Vanbrugh— The  New  Vestry-Hall— Cobbett— Scars- 
dale  House — The  Curzons,  and  Pope's  and  Rowe's 
Earl  of  Scarsdale— The  Workhouse  .  .  .  .  126 

CHAPTER  ELEVEN.— Terraces  ridiculously  so  called— 
Lower  Phillimore  Place  and  Shaftesbury  House — 
Wilkie — Hornton  Street— Dr  Dibdin  and  his  Biblio- 
mania— A  Brief  Courtship — Leonard's  Place  and 
Earl's  Court  Terrace — Mrs  Inchbald — Edwardes 
Square — Curious  Tradition  respecting  it — Coleridge  138 

CHAPTER  TWELVE.— Holland  House  —  Its  Ancient 
Exterior  and  Interior — The  Lodge — Want  of  Colour 
in  England — Cromwell  and  Ireton — The  Ground — 
Inscription  in  Honour  of  Mr  Rogers— Verses  by  Mr 
Luttrell — Gardens  New  and  Old — Napoleon — Lord 
Camelford — Lady  Diana  Rich  and  Lady  Elizabeth 
Thynne  see  their  own  Ghosts 156 

CHAPTER  THIRTEEN. — Holland  House  continued—  Bed- 
rooms of  Rogers  and  Sheridan — The  late  Lord 
Holland's  Children  inducted  into  the  Beauties  of 
Spenser — The  Library — Tradition  of  Addison  and 
the  Two  Bottles  of  Wine — Curiosities  of  Books — 
Fate  of  Camoens — Curiosities  of  Manuscripts — 
Collection  of  Pictures 170 

CHAPTER  FOURTEEN. — Holland  House  continued— 
Family  of  De  Vere,  Earls  of  Oxford — Origin  of  their 
Name — Andrew  Marvell's  Verses  on  Founders  of 
Dutch  States— The  Beauclerks— Sir  Walter  Cope— 
The  Rich  Family — Earls  of  Holland — Performance 
of  Plays — Earl  of  Anglesea — Sir  John  Chardin — 
Duchess  of  Buckinghamshire — Atterbury — William 
Penn— Shippen— William  III.— The  Riches,  Joint 
Earls  of  Warwick  and  Holland — William  Edwardes, 
First  Baron  Kensington 177 

NOTES       .  195 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 


Portrait  of  Leigh  Hunt  E.J.  Sullivan  Frontispiece 

Leigh  Hunt's  House,  Edwardes  Square    Herbert  Railton  P&gt     x 

Headpiece  to  Chapter  I.  E.J.  Sullivan  „        i 

'  Talking  with  other  Wits  at  a  Garden 

Gate'  C.  A.  Shepperson    to  face  page      2 

Marquis  Wellesley  page     16 

Tailpiece  to  Chapter   II.,  Wrought 

Iron  Gates,  Kensington  Gore  Herbert  Railton  „        18 

Kingston  House  „  to  face  page     19 

'A  glass  of  fashion   and   mould   of 

form ' 

John  Wilkes 
Sir  Philip  Francis 
Headpiece  to  Chapter  IV. 
Wilberforce 

Countess  of  Blessington 
Count  D'Orsay 
Gore  House 
'  Chairs  which  sometimes  render  the 

request  "not  to  touch  "provoking'       E.J.  Sullivan  „  54 

Duchess  of  Portsmouth  „  P<*gt    6j 

vii 


C.  A.  Shepperson 

11 

21 

E.J.  Sullivan 

page 

23 

11 

11 

27 

C.  A.  Shepperson 

11 

31 

E.J.  Sullivan 

n 

33 

11 

11 

39 

11 

11 

45 

Herbert  Railton 

to  face  page 

So 

Vlll 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


David  Garrick 

Headpiece  to  Chapter  VI. 

Kensington  House 

Headpiece  to  Chapter  VII.,  Gate 
and  Lodge,  Kensington  Palace 

'  Some  poor  Irish  people  hanging 
about  the  corners' 

The  Rookery 

The  Greyhound 

'The  plethora  which  may  be  par- 
doned to  episcopal  virtues ' 

Gay 

Old  Red  Lion  Inn,  High  Street 

Headpiece  to  Chapter  VIII.,  Old 
Red  Lion  Inn,  High  Street 

Interior  of  Kensington  Church 

Leaving  Church 

George  Coleman  the  Elder 

Exterior  of  Kensington  Church 

'Those  are  my  dear  Children' 

Figures  at  Charity  School 

Entrance  to  Scarsdale  House 

Scarsdale  House 

Sir  David  Wilkie 

'Very  merry  over  old  books  .  .  . 
and  what  they  persuaded  them- 
selves was  old  wine ' 

Charles  Dibdin 


E.J.  Sullivan                   page  65 

C.  A.  Shepperson                  „  69 

Herbert  Rail  ton      to  face  page  76 

page  83 

E.J.  Sullivan         to  face  page  86 

Herbert  Railton  88 

91 


E.J.  Sullivan  to  face  page  95 

C.  A.  Shepperson  page  97 

Herbert  Railton  „  99 

„  „  100 

„  to  face  page  104 

C.  A  .  Shepperson  page  x  10 

E.J.  Sullivan  „  113 

Herbert  Railton  to  face  page  116 

»  »  123 

„  pages  126-127 

P<*&  '35 

„  to  face  page  136 

E.J.  Sullivan  page  140 


to  face  page  146 
page  148 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


IX 


Edwardes  Square 

S.  T.  Coleridge 

Oriel,  Holland  House 

Inigo  Jones'  Gateway 

Rogers'  Alcove 

'  The  way  in  which  our  grandmothers 

and   great-grandmothers    .    .    . 

enjoyed  their  gardens ' 
The  Moats 
Roman  Altar 

Where  Lord  Camelford  was  killed 
The  Ghost's  Avenue 
Tailpiece 

Sundial,  Holland  House 
Sundial  and  Alcove 
The  Dutch  Garden,  Holland  House 
'  There  is  a  rumour  that   Cromwell 

and  I  re  ton  conferred  here' 

The  Ball-room  Turret,  Holland  House 


Herbert  Railton  P<*ge     151 

E.J.  Sullivan  „      155 

Herbert  Railton  „      157 

„  to  face  page  158 

161 


E.J.  Sullivan  to  face  page  163 

Herbert  Railton  „          164 

„  page  165 

„  „      166 

„  to  face  page  168 

C.  A.  Shepperson  page  169 

Herbert  Railton  „      173 

»  »      176 

„  to  face  page  180 


C.  A.  Shepperson 
Herbert  Railton 


184 
190 


nt/  ^ 


»*• 


INTRODUCTION 

THA  T  i  The  Old  Court  Suburb '  should  have  been 
written  during  its  author's  long  sojourn  at  Kensington, 
is  a  presumption  so  plausible,  that  one  is  not  surprised 
to  find  it  announced  as  an  established  fact.  But  a  very 
brief  consultation  of  the  late  Mr  Monkhouse's  careful 
life  of  Leigh  Hunt  in  the  '  Great  Writers '  series, 
speedily  shows  that  the  statement  requires  considerable 
qualification.  In  1840  Leigh  Hunt  moved  from  4 
(now  \Q),  Upper  Cheyne  Row,  Chelsea,  to  32  Edwardes 
Square,  Kensington  ;  and  he  lived  at  the  latter  place 
until  1851,  when  he  again  moved  to  2  Phillimore 
Terrace  in  the  same  parish.  Here  the  death,  in  1852, 
of  Vincent  Hunt,  his  '  too  willing  factotum,  amanuensis, 
friend,  son,  and  servant}  made  the  place  painful  to 
him ;  and  about  the  middle  of  1853  he  migrated  to 
7  Cornwall  Road,  Hammersmith  ('  near  Hammersmith 
Broadway',  says  one  of  his  correspondents),  where 
he  continued  to  live  until  his  death  in  1859.  Like 
1  The  Town'  chapters  of  which  had  been  previously 
contributed  to  the  London  Journal,  parts  of '  The  Old 
Court  Suburb'  appeared  (between  August  1853  ana> 
February  1854^)  in  the  Household  Words  of  Dickens, 
— a  circumstance  which  seems  to  imply  that  the  portrait 
of  Harold  Skimpole  in  'Bleak  House'  was  already 
xi 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

either  forgotten  or  forgiven,  —  and  the  whole  was 
published  in  two  volumes  by  Hurst  and  Blackett  in 
1855.  Some  preliminary  work  was  doubtless  done 
at  Phillimore  Terrace  in  the  early  months  of  1853; 
but  it  is  clear  from  the  above  that  the  bulk  of  '  The 
Old  Court  Suburb'  must  have  been  composed  at 
Hammersmith  between  the  middle  0^  1853  and  1855. 
In  1855  Leigh  Hunt  was  seventy-one  years  of  age, 
and  was  living  in  comparative  comfort.  The  old 
'  nondescript^  '  unutterable '  days  of  his  '•poetical  Tinker- 
dom'  at  Chelsea  (we  are  borrowing  the  language  of  his 
neighbour  Carlyle),  if  not  entirely  over  and  past,  had 
been  materially  mitigated.  He  was  in  receipt  of  an 
assured  income.  The  Shelley  family  had  generously 
given  him  an  annuity  of  £120;  the  Government, 
besides  two  sums  of  £200,  a  Civil  List  pension  of 
£200  a  year ;  and  a  benefit  performance  of  '  Every 
Man  in  his  Humour*  by  friendly  amateurs,  had  brought 
him  a  bonus  of  ^900.  He  had  begun  to  taste  '  the 
beatitude  of  actually  paying  as  he  went,  and  incurring 
no  more  bills'  He  had  become  a  contributor  to  the 
Edinburgh  Review,  and  had  succeeded,  by  the  good 
offices  of  Macaulay,  in  pruning  his  colloquialisms  to 
the  formal  standard  of  Macvey  Napier.  He  was  still 
the  old  sensitive,  luminous-eyed  Leigh  Hunt  of  the 
wide  collar  and  floating  '  printed  night-gown'  delighted 
with  a  flower  or  a  bird  or  a  butterfly,  ready  to  die 
for  a  principle,  or  to  scream  out  at  a  shower ;  but 
'  Time  had  snowed  upon  his  pericranium',  and  to  his 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

breezy  robe  de  chambre  he  had  added,  or  was  about 
to  add,  a  protective  cape,  more  or  less  ample,  of  faded 
black  silk,  which  gave  him  the  air  (says  John  Forster) 
of  'an  old  French  abbe"!  Happily,  about  this  very 
time,  his  portrait  has  been  drawn  by  a  master.  He 
was  visited  at  Hammersmith  by  Nathaniel  Hawthorne, 
who  devotes  several  pages  of  '  Our  Old  Home '  to  an 
account  of  his  impressions.  He  found  Leigh  Hunt 
'  a  beautiful  and  venerable  old  man,  buttoned  to  the  chin 
in  a  black  dress-coat  \he  must  have  been  going  out 
when  Hawthorne  called,  for  this  was  not  his  ordinary 
costume],  tall  and  slender,  with  a  countenance  quietly 
alive  all  over,  and  the  gentlest  and  most  naturally 
courteous  manner.'  The  picture  is  too  detailed  to  copy 
in  full.  But  the  author  of  '  The  Scarlet  Letter '  lays 
stress  on  the  wonderful  variety  in  Hun  f  splay  of  features, 
on  his  beautiful  eyes  and  caressing  voice,  his  agreeable, 
soft,  and  wholly  unconventional  manners,  and  the 
nervous  foldings  of  his  hands  as  he  talked,  which,  with 
other  evidences,  testified  to  his  fine  and  immediate 
sensibility.  Lastly,  Hawthorne  notes — as  others  have 
noted — his  frank  and  almost  childlike  welcoming  of 
praise.  '  He  accepted  if,'  says  Barry  Cornwall  (who 
had  introduced  Hawthorne  to  him),  '  less  as  a  mark  of 
respect  from  others,  than  as  a  delight  of  which  all  are 
entitled  to  partake,  such  as  spring  weather,  the  scent 
of  flowers,  or  the  flavour  of  wine' 

Although,  as  already  explained,  Leigh  Hunt's  circum- 
stances had  improved  during  the  last  twenty  years  of 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

his  life,  it  is  clear  from  Hawthorne's  words  that  they 
must  have  still  been  far  from  ideal.  The  house  at 
7  Cornwall  Road,  Hammersmith,  was  very  plain, 
small,  and  shabby.  It  was  in  a  mean  street,  and  the 
forlorn  ' little  study,  or  parlour,  or  both'  was  poorly 
papered  and  poorly  carpeted,  with  '  an  awful  lack  of 
upholstery!  *  There  were  no  pictures  that  his  visitor 
remembered  (fancy  this  of  the  man  who  said  '  Put  up 
a  picture  in  your  room  / '),  and  what  was  worse,  there 
were  only  lfew  books'  Alas!  those  ''few  books' ! 
One  sighs  to  think  how  much  the  words  signified  to 
the  writer  who  was  bookish  above  all,  and  conscientious 
to  a  fault  about  ' verifying  his  references'  He  would 
spend  hours,  says  his  son  and  biographer,  Thornton 
Hunt,  in  painfully  checking  what  he  had  perhaps  only 
mentioned  parenthetically,  and  where  authorities  were 
lacking,  the  roundabout  labour  must  often  have  been 
cruel.  In  his  '  Correspondence]  we  get  glimpses  of 
him  at  work  on  this  very  chronicle  of  Old  Kensington, 
and  his  difficulties  are  manifest.  Even  at  the  outset 
of  the  papers,  he  is  delayed  for  lack  of  unobtainable 
material.  Then  we  find  him  writing  to  his  son  Percy 
as  to  the  Lord  Scarsdale  of  Chapter  X.: 

'  Each  mortal  has  his  pleasure  :  none  deny 
Scarsdale  his  bottle,  Darty  his  Ham-pie.' 

Dartineuf  he  knows  all  about ;  but  he  wants  more 

*  This  may  have  improved,  for  later  interviewers  '  admired  the 
taste  which  he  managed  to  communicate  to  his  small  rooms'1  (British 
Quarterly  Review,  October  1885). 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

as  to  Scarsdale  in  connection  with    Scarsdale   House. 
Will  dear  Percy  look   in    Warton,  and  Roscoe,  and 
so  forth  ?    Next  he  is  to  consult  '  the  biggest  History 
of  England  he   can  find*  for   tidings  of  the   '  Sir 
Manhood  Penruddock '  of  Chapter  VIII. ;  after  which 
his  fond  parent    requires  particulars    in    support   of 
a   growing   theory    about   the     Veres    and    Holland 
(Chapter  XIV.).      Percy   is   to    examine    'a    Dutch 
and  English   or  Dutch   and  French   Dictionary* — if 
'  the  Library   [probably    the   London   Library   which 
Hunt    complimented    in    the    '  Stories  from    Italian 
Poets,'  or  perhaps   Hookham's  in   Bond  Street]   has 
such   a   thing'  —  to  find  out  the  meaning  of  Weer. 
And  can  he  detect  Weer — the  place,   that  is  —  in  a 
map  ?      All  this  inquiry  by  deputy   must  have  been 
most   tedious,    not   only    to    the    deputy,    but    to    the 
inquirer.     Then  sickness  comes  to  add  its  obstructions 
and  delays  to  that '  temperament  easily  solaced  in  mind, 
and  as  easily  drowsed  in  body ;  quick  to  enjoy  every 
object  in  creation,  .  .  .  and  at  the  same  time   really 
qualified  to  do  nothing]  as  he  says  in  his  'Apologia] 
except  in  certain  ways.     Holland  House  he  did  manage 
to  go  over,  through  the  kindness  of  General  Fox  and 
his  wife  ;  but  notwithstanding  '  a  gracious  permission 
to  see  the  interior  of  Kensington  Palace]  continual  ill- 
health  seems  to  have  prevented  him  from  making  that 
excursion,  as  it  had  before  prevented  him,  from  seeing  the 
Great  Exhibition  of  1851.      These  things  have  their 
effects  upon  his  work.     Apart  from  the  disposition  to 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

digress  which  is  inseparable  from  his  manner  and  his 
charm,  one  sees  that  more  than  one  of  the  chapters  of 
'  The  Old  Court  Suburb '  are  written  round  a  single  book, 
that  they  are  sometimes  expanded  where  expansion  is 
not  needed,  and  that  occasionally  the  digressions  have 
an  air  of  padding.  But  the  writer's  enthusiasm,  and 
his  capacity  (to  quote  his  own  words  again)  (for 
enjoying  every  object  in  creation,  everything  in  nature 
and  in  art,  every  sight,  every  sound,  every  book,  picture 
and  flower',  generally  bring  him  through  triumphantly. 
He  is  so  pleased  himself  that,  in  Steele's  phrase,  it  is 
1  humanity '  for  his  reader  to  be  pleased  as  well.  And 
he  is  unquestionably  a  delightful  guide  and  companion. 
He  has  always  '  the  right  association  in  the  right 
place',  said  one  of  his  early  reviewers.  ' Nowhere  is  it 
possible  to  become  more  agreeably  acquainted  with 
celebrated  people,  or  to  wander  more  pleasantly  in  the 
by-paths  of  history ' ;  and  Charles  Lamb  admirably  hit 
off  his  friend" s  best  quality  when  he  wrote — 

'  The  Indicative  is  your  Potential  Mood?  . 
'  The  Old  Court  Suburb '  of  to-day  presents  a  very 
different  aspect  from  that  which  was  described  by 
Leigh  Hunt  in  1855.  From  Kensal  Green  on  the  north 
(where  he  lies  buried)  to  Brompton  on  the  south  ;  from 
Holland  House  on  the  west  to  Knightsbridge  on  the 
east — a  Babel  of  buildings  has  sprung  up  of  which 
he  knew  nothing.  Holland  House,  indeed,  is  still 
existent,  though  in  contracted  grounds  ;  but  a  railway 
has  tunnelled  under  Campden  Hill,  and  Queen  Anne's 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

Palace  is  surrendered  in  part  to  the  sightseer.  Gore 
House,  Kensington  House,  Colby  House,  Scarsdale  House, 
have  all  disappeared ;  and  a  fine  Gothic  edifice  by  Sir 
Gilbert  Scott  has  taken  the  place  of  the  picturesque 
old  Church  in  the  High  Street.  The  Albert  Memorial, 
the  Albert  Hall,  the  Imperial  Institute,  the  Natural 
History  Museum,  the  South  Kensington  Collections, 
are  all  post-Huntian  ;  and  they  are  not  yet  grown  old 
enough  to  be  venerable.  It  has  been  no  part  of  the  plan 
of  this  Preface  to  describe  these  modern  additions  to 
the  bricks  and  mortar  of  the  locality,  or  to  relate  its 
intermediate  history.  But  with  the  help  of  such 
recent  authorities  as  Mr  Loftids  excellent '  Kensington} 
and  the  '  Holland  House '  of  the  Princess  Marie  Liech- 
tenstein, we  have  endeavoured  to  add  to  each  chapter 
such  brief  notes  as  may  serve  to  leave  the  reader  in  no 
doubt  wherever  the  references  of  Leigh  Hunt  have 
become  obscure  from  lapse  of  time,  or  require  to  be 
corrected  in  the  light  of  the  latest  researches. 

A  US  TIN  DOBS  ON. 
EALING,  October  1901. 


THE  beauty  and  salubrity  of  Kensington,  its  com- 
bination (so  to  speak)  of  the  elegancies  of  town  and 
country,  and  the  multitude  of  its  associations  with 
courts,  wits,  and  literature,  have  long  rendered  it 
such  a  favourite  with  the  lovers  of  books,  that  the 
want  of  some  account  of  it,  not  altogether  alien  to 
its  character,  has  constantly  surprised  them. 

The  place  is  not  only  free  from  everything 
repulsive  to  the  consideration  (unless  it  be  one 
hidden  spot,  which  the  new  improvements  will 
remove),  but  attention  is  fairly  invited  throughout. 
The  way  to  it  is  the  pleasantest  out  of  town ;  you 
may  walk  in  high-road,  or  on  grass,  as  you  please ; 
the  fresh  air  salutes  you  from  a  healthy  soil ;  and 
there  is  not  a  step  of  the  way,  from  its  commence- 
A 


2  THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

ment  at  Kensington  Gore,  to  its  termination  beyond 
Holland  House,  in  which  you  are  not  greeted  with 
the  face  of  some  pleasant  memory. 

Here,  to  'minds'  eyes'  conversant  with  local  bio- 
graphy, stands  a  beauty,  looking  out  of  a  window ; 
there,  a  wit,  talking  with  other  wits  at  a  garden-gate ; 
there,  a  poet  on  the  green  sward,  glad  to  get  out  of 
the  London  smoke,  and  find  himself  among  trees. 

Here  come  De  Veres  of  the  times  of  old  ;  Hollands 
and  Davenants,  of  the  Stuart  and  Cromwell  times  ; 
Evelyn  peering  about  him  soberly,  and  Samuel  Pepys 
in  a  bustle.  Here  advance  Prior,  Swift,  Arbuthnot, 
Gay,  Sir  Isaac  Newton  ;  Steele  from  visiting  Addison, 
Walpole  from  visiting  the  Foxes,  Johnson  from  a 
dinner  with  Elphinstone,  Junius  from  a  communica- 
tion with  Wilkes. 

Here,  in  his  carriage,  is  King  William  the  Third, 
going  from  the  Palace  to  open  Parliament ;  Queen 
Anne,  for  the  same  purpose ;  George  the  First, 
George  the  Second  (we  shall  have  the  pleasure  of 
looking  at  all  these  personages  a  little  more  closely) ; 
and  there,  from  out  of  Kensington  Gardens,  comes 
bursting,  as  if  the  whole  recorded  polite  world  were 
in  flower  at  one  and  the  same  period,  all  the  fashion 
of  the  gayest  times  of  those  sovereigns,  blooming 
with  chintzes,  full-blown  with  hoop-petticoats,  tower- 
ing with  top-knots  and  toupees. 

Here  comes  '  Lady  Mary,'  quizzing  everybody, 
and  Lady  Suffolk,  looking  discreet ;  there  the  lovely 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB  3 

Bellendens  and  Lepels ;  there  Miss  Howe,  laughing 
with  Nanty  Lowther  (who  made  her  very  grave  after- 
wards) ;  there  Chesterfield,  Hanbury  Williams,  Lord 
Hervey  ;  Miss  Chudleigh,  not  over-clothed  ;  the  Miss 
Gunnings,  drawing  crowds  of  admirers ;  and  here  is 
George  Selwyn  interchanging  wit  with  my  Lady 
Townshend,  the  '  Lady  Bellaston '  (so,  at  least,  it 
has  been  said)  of  '  Tom  Jones.' 

Who  is  to  know  of  all  this  company,  and  not 
be  willing  to  meet  it?  To  meet  it,  therefore,  we 
propose,  both  out-of-doors  and  in-doors,  not  omit- 
ting other  persons  who  are  worth  half  the  rest — 
Mrs  Inchbald  for  one.  Mrs  Inchbald  shall  close 
the  last  generation  for  us,  and  Coleridge  shall 
bring  us  down  to  our  own  time. 

Not  that  we  propose  to  treat  the  subject  chrono- 
logically, except  in  exhausting  one  point  at  a  time. 
The  general  chronological  point  of  view,  though 
good  to  begin  with,  in  order  to  show  the  rise  and 
growth  of  a  place,  would  not  suit  inspection  into 
particulars.  It  would  only  end  in  confusing  both 
place  and  time,  by  jumping  backwards  and  for- 
wards from  the  same  houses  for  the  purpose  of 
meeting  contemporary  demands. 

The  best  way  of  proceeding,  after  taking  the 
general  survey,  is  to  set  out  from  some  particular 
spot,  on  the  ordinary  principle  of  perambulation, 
and  so  attend  to  each  house,  or  set  of  premises  by 
itself,  as  far  as  we  are  acquainted  with  it 


4  THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB 

Our  perambulation,  however,  must  not  be  parochial. 
Parish  geography  is  a  singular  confounder  of  all  re- 
ceived ideas  of  limitation.  Ely  Place,  Holborn,  is  in 
the  county  of  Cambridge ;  there  are  portions  of  other 
shires,  which  are  in  other  shires  ;  and,  parochially  con- 
sidered, Kensington  is  not  only  more  than  Kensing- 
ton in  some  places,  but  it  is  not  Kensington  itself 
in  others.  In  Kensington  parish,  for  instance,  are 
included  Earl's  Court,  Little  Chelsea,  Old  and  New 
Brompton,  Kensal  Green,  and  even  some  of  the 
houses  in  Sloane  Street ;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
Kensington  Palace  and  Kensington  Gardens  are  not 
in  Kensington,  but  in  the  parish  of  St  Margaret's, 
Westminster. 

Taking  leave,  therefore,  of  the  wandering  imagina- 
tions of  parish  officers,  and  confining  ourselves  to  the 
received  idea  of  Kensington,  which  is  the  same  as 
that  of  the  Post-office  or  Red  Book,  we  shall  consider 
the  locality  as  circumscribed  by  Knightsbridge,  Earl's 
Court,  Hammersmith,  Netting  Hill,  and  Bayswater ; 
and  since  Kensington  is  more  visited  from  the  London 
side  than  any  other,  with  the  London  side  we  shall 
begin. 

As  to  the  nature  and  amount  of  the  attention  we 
purpose  to  pay  to  the  respective  objects  of  our  notice, 
it  will  be  precisely  that  which  other  observers  pay, 
who  are  interested  in  such  things,  when  going  along 
a  road.  We  shall  suppose  that  the  reader  is  our 
companion ;  that  we  are  giving  him  what  informa- 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB  5 

tion  we  possess  in  return  for  the  pleasure  of  his 
society ;  and  that  we  say  neither  more  nor  less  on 
any  one  of  the  objects,  than  might  naturally  be 
said  between  friends  actually  walking  together, 
and  equally  alive  to  the  only  real  interest  of  the 
subject,  that  is  to  say,  of  human  interest;  for 
gardens  themselves,  whether  at  Kensington  or  at 
Eden,  would  be  nothing  without  eyes  to  enjoy 
them ;  and  houses  are  dry  bones,  unless  invested 
with  interests  of  flesh  and  blood. 

But  first  for  the  brief  survey  before  mentioned,  and 
a  word  or  two  respecting  the  name  of  the  place. 

The  meaning  of  the  word  Kensington  is  disputed. 
It  is  commonly  derived  from  the  Saxon  Kynings- 
tun,  King's-town  ;  though,  as  it  is  written  Chenesitun 
in  Doomsday  Book,  and  in  other  old  records,  it  has 
been  thought  traceable  to  some  landed  proprietor, 
of  the  name  of  Chenesi,  a  family  so  called  having 
been  found  in  Somersetshire,  in  the  reign  of  Edward 
the  Confessor.  Another  ancient  authority  writes  the 
word,  Chensnetun.  Temptations  to  etymology  are 
great ;  and  as  the  Chenesi  family  was  probably  the 
same  as  the  modern  Cheynes  or  Cheyneys,  and  Cheyne 
comes  from  the  old  French  word  chesne  (oak),  and 
'chensnet'  might  have  been  chesne-nut,  or  chestnut 
(oak  and  chestnut  —  chastain  —  having  possibly  the 
same  root  in  French,  and  their  timber,  of  which 
London  was  built,  possessing  a  good  deal  in 
common),  Saxon  and  Norman  antiquaries  might 


6  THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

be  led  into  much  pleasant  dispute,  as  to  the  regal 
and  woodland  origin  of  the  word  Kensington ; 
whether  the  oak  and  chestnut  trees,  which  still 
have  representatives  in  the  district,  were  the  occa- 
sion of  the  name ;  or  whether  some  Saxon  prince 
— Alfred,  for  instance,  who  was  the  rebuilder  of 
London — going  some  fine  morning  to  look  at  his 
wood-cutters,  and  considering  how  healthy  the  soil 
was,  and  how  fresh  the  western  wind  blew  upon  his 
brow,  chose  to  set  up  a  summer-lodge  there,  in  which 
to  recreate  his  profound  thoughts,  and  benefit  the 
health  which  he  was  injuring  for  his  country.  But 
we  must  not  be  diverted  into  these  speculations. 

Whatever  was  the  origin  of  its  name,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  the  first  inhabited  spot  of  Kensington 
was  an  enclosure  from  the  great  Middlesex  forest 
that  once  occupied  this  side  of  London,  and  which 
extended  northwards  as  far  as  Barnet  The  woody 
nature  of  a  portion  of  the  district  is  implied  in  a 
passage  in  Doomsday  Book ;  and  records  exist, 
which  show  that  forest  trees  were  abundant  in  it 
as  late  as  the  time  of  Henry  the  Eighth. 

The  overflowing  of  the  Thames,  to  which  Chelsea 
and  Hammersmith  were  subject,  stopped  short  of 
the  higher  ground  of  Kensington ;  there  was  no 
great  road  through  it  till  comparatively  modern 
times,  the  only  highway  for  travellers  westward, 
being  the  old  Roman,  or  present  Uxbridge  Road, 
then  bending  southerly  (as  it  still  branches)  to 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB  7 

Turnham  Green ;  and  thus  we  are  to  picture  to 
ourselves  the  future  royal  suburb,  as  consisting  of 
half-a-dozen  rustical  tenements  of  swineherds  and 
other  foresters,  clustering  about  the  homestead  of 
the  chieftain  or  speculator,  whoever  he  was,  that 
first  cleared  away  a  spot  in  that  corner.  By 
degrees  dairymen  came,  and  ploughmen ;  then  vine- 
growers  ;  and  the  first  Norman  proprietor  we  hear 
of,  is  a  bishop, 

'  Albericus  de  Ver  tenet  de  episcopo  Constantiensi 
Chenesit  (um).' 

Aubrey  de  Vere  holds  Kensington  of  the  Bishop 
of  Constance. 

So  writes  Doomsday  Book.  Constance  is  Cout- 
ances  in  Normandy ;  and  the  bishop,  who  was, 
probably,  anything  but  a  reverend  personage,  in 
the  modern  sense  of  the  epithet,  but  a  stalwart, 
jolly  fellow,  clad  in  arms  cap-a-pie,  was  also  Grand 
Justiciary  of  England  ;  that  is  to  say,  one  whose 
business  it  was  to  do  injustice  to  Englishmen,  and 
see  their  goods  and  chattels  delivered  over  to  his 
countrymen,  the  Normans.  Accordingly,  to  set  a 
good  legal  example,  the  Justiciary  seizes  upon  this 
manor  of  Kensington,  which  belonged,  it  seems,  to 
one  '  Edward ' :  a  name  which  signifies  Happy 
Keeper.  So  Happy  Keeper  (unless  detained  to  keep 
the  pigs)  makes  the  best  of  his  way  off,  blessing 
this  delightful  bishop  and  judge,  whose  office  it  is 
to  oust  proprietors  ;  and  he  is,  perhaps,  stripped  and 


8  THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

murdered,  somewhere    about    Notting    Hill,  by   his 
Lordship's  chaplain.* 

The  De  Veres,  however,  who  afterwards  gave 
twenty  Earls  of  Oxford  to  the  English  peerage, 
were  not  long  in  becoming  absolute  possessors  of 
the  Manor  of  Kensington  ;  and  they  held  it,  directly 
or  indirectly,  from  the  time  of  the  Conqueror  nearly 
up  to  that  of  James  the  First.  It  is  doubted,  never- 
theless, whether  they  ever  resided  there,  though  there 
was  a  mansion  belonging  to  them,  which  occupied  a 
site  near  the  present  Holland  House,  and  which  is 
still  represented  by  a  kind  of  remnant  of  a  successor. 
We  shall  have  more  to  say  of  the  family  by-and-by. 

But  whatever  was  the  importance  of  the  district, 
as  the  possession  of  a  race  of  nobles,  it  obtains 
no  distinct  or  certain  image  in  the  mind  of  the 
topographer  till  Holland  House  itself  makes  its 
appearance,  which  was  not  till  the  reign  of  James 
the  First,  when  it  was  built  by  Sir  Walter  Cope, 
who  had  purchased  the  estate  towards  the  close  of 
the  reign  preceding.  A  succession  of  noble  and 
other  residents,  of  whom  we  shall  have  to  speak, 
and  who  have  rendered  it  one  of  the  most  interesting 
objects  in  the  neighbourhood  of  London,  soon 
brought  shops  and  houses  about  it ;  Campden  House, 
the  seat  of  Lord  Campden,  arose  not  long  after 

*  For  the  crimes  and  iniquities  of  the  military  churchmen  who  came 
over  with  William  of  Normandy,  see  Thierry's  '  History  of  the  Con- 
quest,' passim. 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB  9 

Holland  House ;  the  healthiness  and  fashion  of  the 
place  attracted  other  families  of  distinction ;  and 
its  importance  was  completed,  when  King  William 
bought  the  house  and  grounds  of  the  Finch  family 
(Earls  of  Nottingham),  and  converted  the  house 
into  a  palace,  and  the  grounds  into  royal  gardens. 
Holland  House,  Campden  House,  Kensington  House, 
the  Square,  the  Church,  the  Palace,  and  the  Gardens, 
are  the  seven  oldest  objects  of  interest  in  Kensington  ; 
and  lively  and  abundant  are  the  memorials  which 
most  of  them  have  left  us. 

But  newer  creations  possess  their  interest  also, 
up  to  the  latest  period ;  and  it  may  be  said,  without 
the  usual  hazards  attending  prefatory  commendation, 
that  in  comparison  with  'kingly  Kensington,'  as 
Swift  called  it,  every  other  suburb  of  London,  how- 
ever interesting  in  its  degree,  is  but  as  the  strip  of 
garden  before  one  of  its  houses,  compared  with 
Kensington  Gardens  themselves  during  the  height 
of  their  season. 


CHAPTER  TWO 

WE  begin  our  perambulation,  as  proposed,  on  the 
side  next  the  metropolis.  We  should  rather  say, 
next  Piccadilly,  for  the  metropolis,  alas !  and  Ken- 
sington, are  now  joined  ;  though  from  Knightsbridge 
to  the  Palace,  the  houses  still  occupy  only  one  side 
of  the  way. 

It  is  a  very  pleasant  way,  especially  if  you  come 
through  the  Park.  When  we  quit  Piccadilly  for 
Hyde  Park  Corner,  we,  for  our  part,  always  fancy 
that  the  air,  somehow,  feels  not  only  fresher,  but 
whiter,  and  this  feeling  increases  as  we  find  the 
turf  under  our  feet,  and  the  fresh  air  in  one's  face. 
The  roadway  through  Knightsbridge,  with  its  rows 
of  houses  on  one  side,  and  its  barracks  on  the  other, 
is  not  so  agreeable  ;  though,  by  way  of  compensation, 
you  have  the  chance  of  having  your  eyes  refreshed 
with  a  dignified  sergeant  of  dragoons,  too  fat  for  his 
sash,  and  a  tall  private,  walking  with  a  little  woman. 

The  long  and  again  unoccupied  side  of  the  road 
in  the  Park,  reaching  from  the  Knightsbridge 
Barracks  to  within  a  short  distance  of  the  Gardens, 

10 


THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB          n 

lately  presented  to  the  eyes  of  the  world  a  spectacle 
singularly  illustrative  of  the  advanced  character  of 
the  age,  and  such,  we  believe,  as  no  attempts  to 
bring  back  a  worse  spirit  in  Europe  will  deprive  of 
its  good  effects,  however  threatening  those  attempts 
may  appear.  We  need  not  say  that  we  allude  to 
the  Great  Exhibition.  We  do  not  say  'Crystal 
Palace,'  for  it  was  a  pity,  though  it  was  natural 
enough  on  its  first  rising  with  that  fairy  suddenness, 
that  the  building  was  so  called ;  since  it  was  neither 
crystal  nor  a  palace.  It  was  a  bazaar,  admirably 
constructed  for  its  purpose,  and  justly  surprising 
those  who  beheld  its  interior.  When  we  thought 
it  was  to  be  destroyed,  without  renovation  else- 
where, we  felt  amazed  at  the  selfishness  of  such  of 
its  rich  neighbours  as  could  insist  on  the  performance 
of  a  promise  to  that  effect  notwithstanding  the 
wishes  of  millions,  restricted  in  their  enjoyments. 
But  as  soon  as  it  was  determined  that  the  structure 
should  reappear  in  another  quarter,  and  this  too 
with  those  improvements  in  point  of  size  and 
treatment  which  the  designer  himself  had  longed 
for  power  to  effect,  we  felt  as  glad  to  have  the  old 
trees  and  turf  back  again,  undisturbed,  as  the  most 
sequestered  of  the  suburban  aristocracies.  We  re- 
joiced in  a  result,  upon  which,  in  fact,  all  parties 
were  to  be  congratulated  ;  and  we  began  to  own, 
that  there  certainly  had  been  a  dust  and  kick-up 
about  the  once  quiet  approach  to  Kensington,  a 


12          THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB 

turmoil  of  crowds,  and  omnibuses,  and  cabs,  of  hot 
faces  and  loud  voices,  of  stalls,  dogs,  penny  trumpets, 
policemen,  and  extempore  public-houses,  which,  for 
the  sake  of  the  many  themselves,  one  could  hardly 
have  wished  to  see  continued,  lest  they  also  should 
ultimately  have  missed  their  portion  in  the  tranquil 
pleasure  of  the  few.  A  winter-garden,  to  be  sure, 
would  have  been  a  good  thing,  and  conservatories 
and  other  elegancies,  all  the  year  round,  would  have 
been  still  better ;  but  all  these  we  are  promised  in 
the  new  premises  at  Sydenham ;  and  though  the 
near  neighbourhood  of  London  was  an  advantage 
in  some  respects,  it  was  not  such  in  others.  Multi- 
tudes became  somewhat  too  multitudinous.  European 
brotherhood  itself,  now  and  then,  felt  its  toes  trodden 
upon  a  little  too  sharply.  The  most  generous  emula- 
tions, if  they  want  elbow-room,  are  in  danger  of 
relapsing  into  antagonisms.  A  juvenile  wit,  in  the 
shape  of  a  pot-boy,  who  appears  to  have  possessed 
a  profound  natural  insight  into  this  tendency  of  the 
meeting  of  extremes,  cried  out  one  day  to  a  couple 
of  foreigners  who  were  showing  symptoms  of  a  set-to, 
'  Go  it,  all  nations? 

The  road  from  Knightsbridge  to  Kensington, 
which  the  Great  Exhibition  looked  on,  is  called  the 
Gore ;  a  word  which,  with  the  surveyor  as  well  as 
the  sempstress,  appears  to  mean  a  slip  or  graft  of 
something  in  addition,  and  of  the  shape  of  a  blunted 
cone ;  though  the  elegance  to  which  the  spot  has 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB          13 

attained  must  not  let  us  forget,  that  the  same 
word  has  been  employed  in  the  sense  of  '  mud 
and  dirt,'  and  that  the  road  in  this  quarter  used 
to  be  in  very  bad  condition.  Lord  Hervey,  writing 
towards  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  describes 
it  as  shocking.  And  the  royal  roads  through  the 
Park  were  little  better. 

'The  removing  from  Kensington  to  St  James's, 
for  the  purpose  of  facilitating  the  Queen's  inter- 
course with  ministers,  seems  in  our  days'  (observes 
the  editor  of  his  Lordship's  '  Memoirs ')  '  very  singular; 
but  the  following  extract  from  a  letter  to  his  mother, 
dated  27th  November  1736,  will  explain  it. 

'"The  road  between  this  place  (Kensington  and 
London)  is  grown  so  infamously  bad,  that  we  live 
here  in  the  same  solitude  as  we  should  do  if  cast 
on  a  rock  in  the  middle  of  the  ocean ;  and  all  the 
Londoners  tell  us  there  is  between  them  and  us  a 
great  impassable  gulf  of  mud.  There  are  two  ways 
through  the  Park,  but  the  new  one  is  so  convex, 
and  the  old  one  so  concave,  that  by  this  extreme 
of  faults  they  agree  in  the  common  one  of  being, 
like  the  high  road,  impassable." '  * 

Kensington  Gore  commences  opposite  Prince's 
Gate,  with  the  mansion  called  Ennismore  or 
Listowell  House,  formerly  Kingston  House.  It 
is  now  the  residence  of  the  nobleman  who  possesses 
those  two  first  titles,  was  lately  that  of  the  Marquis 
*  Vol.  ii.  p.  189. 


14         THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB 

Wellesley,  and  was  built  by  the  once  notorious 
Duchess  of  Kingston,  famous  in  the  annals  of 
bigamy. 

The  Duchess  of  Kingston — the  Miss  Chudleigh, 
of  whom  we  have  had  a  glimpse  by  anticipation  in 
Kensington  Gardens — was  an  adventuress,  who, 
after  playing  tricks  with  a  parish  register  for  the 
purpose  of  alternately  falsifying  and  substantiating 
a  real  marriage,  according  as  the  prospects  of  her 
husband  varied,  imposed  herself  on  a  duke  for  a 
spinster,  and  survived  him  as  his  duchess  till  un- 
masked by  a  Court  of  Law. 

She  was  a  well-born  and  handsome,  but  coarse- 
minded  woman,  qualified  to  impose  on  none  but 
very  young  or  very  shallow  admirers.  Her  first 
husband,  who  became  Earl  of  Bristol,  was  at  the 
time  of  his  marriage  a  young  seaman,  just  out  of 
his  teens ;  and  the  Duke,  her  second  husband, 
though  he  was  nephew  of  Lady  Mary  Wortley 
Montagu,  appears  never  to  have  outgrown  the 
teens  of  his  understanding. 

Hating  prolixity  and  mock-modesty,  her  Lady- 
ship's maxim,  we  are  told,  was  to  be  '  short,  clear, 
and  surprising ' ;  so  she  concentrated  her  rhetoric 
into  swearing,  and  dressed  in  a  style  next  to 
nakedness.  The  wealth,  however,  which  was  be- 
queathed her  by  the  Duke,  enabled  her,  in  spite 
of  the  loss  of  his  title  in  England,  to  go  and  flare 
as  a  Duchess  abroad,  where  her  jewels  procured 


THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB          15 

her  the  friendship  of  sovereigns,  and  the  Pope 
figured  in  her  will. 

Marquis  Wellesley  redeems  Kingston  House  from 
the  disgrace  of  its  origin ;  for  he  was  a  highly 
refined  personage.  Some  thought  him  too  refined  ; 
and  stories  were  told  of  the  care  which  he  took  of 
his  complexion.  Fastidious  he  certainly  was ;  fond 
of  pomp  and  show  when  he  governed  India ;  and 
a  little  too  superfine,  perhaps,  in  his  tastes  always. 
There  was  a  curious  difference  in  these,  as  well  as 
in  some  other  respects,  between  him  and  his 
brother,  the  great  soldier.  But  we  must  not  lightly 
believe  stories  to  the  disparagement  of  those  who 
mingle  infirmities  with  great  qualities. 

What  is  certain  of  the  Marquis  Wellesley  is  that, 
with  all  his  aristocratic  drawbacks,  he  was  a  man 
of  gentle  and  kindly  manners ;  very  generous  ;  an 
energetic,  judicious,  and,  upon  the  whole,  singularly 
liberal  statesman  for  an  extender  of  empire ;  and 
that  the  passion  in  him  which  survived  all  others, 
was  a  love  of  the  classical  studies  of  his  boyhood. 
This  was  so  strong,  that  he  directed  himself  to  be 
buried  at  Eton  College,  where  he  had  been  brought 
up — a  triumphant  testimony,  surely,  to  the  natural 
goodness  of  his  heart. 

It  is  affecting  to  our  common  humanity  to  see  one  of 
the  most  public  of  statesmen,  and  one  of  the  most 
sequestered  of  poets  (Gray,  in  his  Ode),  thus  meeting  on 
the  same  good  old  ground  of  boyish  reminiscence. 


MARQUIS  WELLESLEY 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB          17 

'  Ah,  happy  hills  !  ah,  pleasing  shade  ! 

Ah,  fields  beloved  in  vain  ! 
Where  once  my  careless  childhood  stray'd, 
A  stranger  yet  to  pain  ! ' 

Not  'in  vain,'  however,  if  their  influence  thus  ac- 
companies us  through  life,  and  greets  our  approaches 
to  the  grave. 

It  is  said  that  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  who  visited 
the  Marquis  to  the  last,  was  sometimes  kept  wait- 
ing ;  upon  which  he  remarked  one  day,  '  I  believe 
my  brother  thinks  he  is  still  Governor-General  of 
India,  and  that  I  am  only  Colonel  Wellesley.'  It 
is  not  impossible  that,  from  old  habit  and  a  little 
bit  of  civil  grudge  against  military  ascendency  (but 
all  in  a  spirit  of  kindliness,  which  the  sensible 
Duke  would  understand  and  indulge),  the  elder 
brother  did  not  dislike  to  keep  up  his  privileges  of 
primogeniture. 

A  curious  local  preeminence  attends  Kingston 
House,  little  suspected  by  those  who  pass  it.  It 
stands  on  the  highest  ground  between  London  and 
Windsor  Castle. 

Next  to  this  mansion  is  a  row  of  new  houses, 
each  too  high  for  its  width,  called  Prince's  Gate. 
They  resemble  a  set  of  tall  thin  gentlemen,  squeez- 
ing together  to  look  at  something  over  the  way. 

The   old   wall   containing   their    neighbour,   Park 
House,  indicates  the  northern  boundary  of  the  once 
famous    Kensington    or    Brompton    Park    Nursery, 
B 


i8 


THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 


which  figures  in  the  pages  of  the  Spectator  as 
the  establishment  of  Messieurs  London  &  Wise, 
the  most  celebrated  gardeners  of  their  time.  It 
commenced  in  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second ; 
furnished  all  England  with  plants ;  and  is  only  now 
giving  up  its  last  green  ghost  before  the  rise  of 
new  buildings. 


w«yji 

:v     iS  *J       .J 


CHAPTER  THREE 

WE  have  said  that  Kensington  Gore,  in  Red  Books 
and  Directories,  is  understood  to  begin  at  Kingston 
(or  Ennismore)  House.  And  such  is  the  case.  But 
as  the  only  rows  of  houses  till  of  late  years,  that 
is  to  say,  of  houses  in  actual  conjunction,  were  that 
which  you  pass  just  before  reaching  the  Cabinet 
Exhibition,  and  another  lower  down  the  road,  the 
former  of  these  rows  is  still  inscribed,  '  Kensington 
Gore,'  and  is  the  spot  emphatically  so  called.  It 
is  also,  to  distinguish  it  from  the  other,  sometimes 
called  the  Upper  Gore.  We  notice  it  the  more 
particularly,  because  it  is  remarkable,  among  other 
respects,  for  its  style  of  building.  It  consists  but 
of  five  houses,  four  of  which  are  faced  with  white 
stucco,  all  of  them  very  small,  and  Nos.  2  and  3 
apparently  consisting  but  of  one  room  (a  drawing- 
room)  with  six  windows.  Yet  they  have  an  air 
of  elegance,  and  even  of  distinction.  They  look 
as  if  they  had  been  intended  for  the  outhouses, 
or  lodge,  of  some  great  mansion  which  was  never 
built ;  and  as  if,  upon  the  failure  of  that  project, 
19 


20         THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB 

they  had  been  divided  into  apartments  for  retainers 
of  the  Court.  You  might  imagine  that  a  super- 
numerary set  of  maids  of  honour  had  lived  there 
(if  maids  of  honour  could  live  alone) ;  or  that  five 
younger  brothers  of  lords  of  the  bed-chamber  had 
been  the  occupants  —  all  being  bachelors  and  ex- 
pecting places  in  reversion.  The  two  houses  which 
seem  to  be  nothing  but  one  drawing-room,  possess, 
however,  parlours  and  second  stories  at  the  back, 
and  have  good  gardens ;  so  that  what  with  their 
flowers  behind  them,  the  park  in  front,  and  their 
own  neatness  and  elegance,  the  miniature  aristoc- 
racy of  their  appearance  is  not  ill  borne  out. 

In  the  year  1816,  Mrs  Inchbald  (of  whom  more 
hereafter)  knocked  at  the  door  of  one  of  these 
houses,  in  hopes  of  getting  the  apartments  that 
were  to  let ;  but  the  lodging  -  house  lady  was  so 
fine  a  personage,  and  so  very  unaccommodating, 
besides  reserving  all  the  prospect  for  herself,  and 
charging  a  round  sum  for  the  rooms  which  had 
no  prospect,  that  the  authoress  of  the  '  Simple 
Story'  indignantly  walked  off.  She  says  that  the 
furniture  was  crazy ;  that  she  would  not  have 
accepted  the  first  floor,  had  it  been  offered  her  for 
nothing ;  and  that  one  of  her  big  trunks  would 
have  taken  up  half  the  bedroom. 

Since  that  day,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
the  furniture  has  much  improved  ;  for  besides  the 
air  of  taste  which  is  diffused  over  all  the  little 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB         21 

stuccoed  houses,  they  have  boasted  divers  inhabitants 
of  worship :  and  at  No.  5,  for  a  short  time,  lived 
Count  d'Orsay.  We  shall  have  more  to  say  of 
this  distinguished  person  a  little  further  on,  when 
we  come  to  Gore  House.  But  it  is  impossible  to 
mention  such  a  '  glass  of  fashion,  and  mould  of  form,' 
without  stopping  a  moment  to  look  at  him  with 
our  '  mind's  eye ' ;  and  as  care  had  not  yet  over- 
taken him  while  residing  at  this  house,  we  cannot 
but  observe  at  once  how  truly  he  merited  the  ap- 
plication of  those  words  of  Shakspeare. 

To  see  d'Orsay  coming  up  a  lobby,  or  a  drawing- 
room,  was  a  sight ;  his  face  was  so  delicate,  his 
figure  so  manly,  and  his  white  waistcoat  so  ample 
and  august.  We  happened  once  to  see  him  and 
O'Connell  sitting  opposite  one  another,  the  latter 
with  a  waistcoat  to  match  ;  and  we  were  at  a  loss 
to  think  which  had  the  finer  '  thorax '  of  the  two — 
the  great  Irishman,  who  thundered  across  the 
channel,  or  the  magnificent  French  Adonis,  who 
seemed  to  ennoble  dandyism. 

Over  the  doorway  of  No.  2  is  a  vase ;  and  as  old 
inhabitants  do  not  remember  when  this  vase  was 
set  up,  it  was  not  improbably  a  manifestation  of 
his  classical  taste  by  a  once  much-talked-of  person  ; 
for  in  this  house  a  little  sequestered  establishment 
was  kept  by  the  once  famous  demagogue,  Wilkes — 
a  man  as  much  over-estimated  perhaps  by  his  ad- 
mirers, for  a  patriotism  which  was  never  thoroughly 


22         THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

disinterested,  as  he  was  depreciated  for  a  libertinism, 
by  no  means  unaccompanied  with  good  qualities. 
'  Jack  Wilkes,'  as  he  was  familiarly  called — Member 
of  Parliament,  alderman,  fine  gentleman,  scholar, 
coarse  wit,  and  middling  writer,  was  certainly  an 
'impudent  dog,'  in  more  senses  than  that  of  'Jack 
Absolute'  in  the  play.  Excess  of  animal  spirits, 
and  the  want  of  any  depth  of  perception  into  some 
of  the  gravest  questions,  led  him  into  outrages  against 
decorum,  that  were  justly  denounced  by  all  but  the 
hypocritical.  Nevertheless,  the  country  is  indebted 
to  him  for  more  than  one  benefit,  particularly  the 
freedom  from  arbitrary  arrest ;  and  the  two  daughters 
that  Jack  left  behind  him,  illegitimate  as  well  as 
legitimate,  were  models  of  well-educated,  sensible 
women,  as  fond  of  their  father  as  he  had  shown 
himself  fond  of  them.  The  popularity  to  which  he 
had  attained  at  one  time  was  immense.  'Wilkes 
and  Liberty '  was  the  motto  of  the  universal  English 
nation.  It  was  on  every  wall ;  sometimes  on  every 
door,  and  on  every  coach  (to  enable  it  to  get  along) ; 
it  stamped  the  butter-pats,  the  biscuits,  the  handker- 
chiefs ;  in  short,  had  so  identified  one  word  with 
the  other,  that  a  wit,  writing  to  somebody,  began 
his  letter  with,  '  Sir,  I  take  the  Wilkes  and  Liberty 
to  assure  you." 

Wilkes  prospered  so  well  by  his  patriotism,  that 
he  maintained  three  establishments  at  a  time;  one 
in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  for  the  summer ;  another  in 


WILKES 


24         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

Grosvenor  Square,  where  his  daughter  Mary  kept 
house  for  him  ;  and  the  third  at  this  place  in  Ken- 
sington Gore,  where  his  second  daughter,  Harriet, 
lived  with  her  mother,  a  Mrs  Arnold,  who  assisted 
in  training  her  with  a  propriety  that  must  have 
been  thought  remarkable.  The  first  daughter,  who 
was  as  plain  and  as  lively  as  her  father,  died  un- 
married, universally  lamented.  The  other,  a  very 
agreeable  lady,  in  face  as  well  as  in  manners,  we 
had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  once,  in  company  with 
her  husband,  the  late  estimable  Serjeant  Rough, 
who  became  a  judge  in  India,  and  who  deplored 
her  loss. 

A  Kensington  memorandum  by  Wilkes  will  show 
what  high  visitors  he  had,  and  how  well  he  could 
entertain  them. 

'  Mr  Swinburne  dined  with  me  last  Sunday,  with 
Monsieur  Barthelemi,  and  the  Counts  Woronzow 
and  Nesselrode.  I  gave  them  the  chicken  -  turtle, 
dressed  at  the  London  Tavern,  a  haunch  of  venison, 
and  was  served  by  James  and  Samuel  from  Prince's 
Court,  who  behave  very  well.  The  day  passed  very 
cheerfully,  and  they  all  expressed  themselves  highly 
delighted.' 

Wilkes,  who  lived  to  a  good  age,  owing  probably 
to  his  love  of  exercise,  was  in  the  habit,  to  the  last, 
of  walking  from  Kensington  to  the  city,  deaf  to 
the  solicitations  of  the  hackney-coachmen,  and  not 
at  all  minding,  or  rather,  perhaps,  courting,  the 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB         25 

attention  of  everybody  else  to  an  appearance,  which 
must  always  have  been  remarkable.  Personal  defects 
deprecate  or  defy  notice,  according  to  the  disposi- 
tion of  the  individual.  Wilkes  was  not  disposed  to 
deprecate  anything.  He  was  tall,  meagre,  and 
sallow,  with  an  underhung,  grinning,  good-humoured 
jaw,  and  an  obliquity  of  vision,  which,  however 
objectionable  in  the  eyes  of  opponents,  occasioned 
the  famous  vindication  from  a  partizan,  that  its 
possessor  did  not  'squint  more  than  a  gentleman 
should.'  Upon  the  strength  of  his  having  been  a 
Colonel  of  Militia,  the  venerable  patriot  daily  attired 
his  person  in  a  suit  of  scarlet  and  buff,  with  a  rosette 
in  his  cocked  hat,  and  a  pair  of  military  boots ;  and 
the  reader  may  fancy  him  thus  coming  towards 
Knightsbridge,  ready  to  take  off  the  hat  in  the 
highest  style  of  good  breeding  to  anybody  that 
courted  it,  or  to  give  the  gentleman  'satisfaction,' 
if  he  was  disrespectful  to  the  squint.  For  Wilkes 
was  as  brave  as  he  was  light-hearted.  He  was  an 
odd  kind  of  English-Frenchman,  that  had  strayed 
into  Farringdon  Ward  Without ;  and  he  ultimately 
mystified  both  King  and  people ;  for  he  was  really 
of  no  party,  but  that  of  pleasure  and  a  fine  coat. 
The  best  thing  about  him  was  his  love  of  his 
daughters ;  just  as  the  pleasantest  thing  in  the 
French  is  their  walking  about  with  their  families 
on  the  Boulevards,  after  all  the  turbulence  and 
volatility  of  their  insurrections. 


26         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

But  an  interest  attaches  to  this  house  of  Wilkes's 
far  beyond  these  pleasant  anomalies  ;  for  here  Junius 
visited.  At  this  door,  knocking  towards  dinner- 
time, might  be  seen  a  tall,  good-looking  gentleman, 
of  an  imposing  presence,  who,  if  anybody  passing 
by  had  known  who  he  was,  and  had  chosen  to 
go  and  tell  it,  might  have  been  the  making  of 
the  man's  fortune.  This  was  Philip  Francis,  after- 
wards one  of  the  denouncers  of  Hastings,  ulti- 
mately Sir  Philip  Francis,  K.B.,  and  now,  since 
the  publication  of  Mr  Taylor's  book  on  the 
subject,  understood  to  be  that  'mighty  boar  of 
the  forest,'  as  Burke  called  him,  trampling  down 
all  before  him,  the  author  of  '  Junius's  Letters.' 
Mrs  Rough  said,  that  he  dined  at  Kensington  fre- 
quently, and  that  he  once  cut  off  a  lock  of  her  hair. 
She  was  then  a  child.  She  only  knew  him  as  Mr 
Francis ;  but  she  had  '  an  obscure  imagination  that 
her  father  once  said  she  had  met  Junius.'  He  might 
so,  in  after  days  ;  but  we  feel  convinced  that  Wilkes 
did  not  know  him  for  Junius  at  the  time.  He  treats 
the  latter,  in  his  correspondence,  with  a  reverence 
which  was  not  compatible  with  '  Wilkes  and  Liberty.' 
He  took  Junius,  we  suspect,  to  be  Burke  or  Chatham, 
probably  the  latter.  He  once,  it  is  true,  when  Lord 
Mayor,  invited  the  great  unknown  to  a  ball,  adding, 
in  a  truly  French  style  of  classical  allusion  (then  the 
tone  of  the  day)  how  happy  he  should  be  to  see  '  his 
Portia  (Miss  Wilkes)  dance  a  graceful  minuet  with 


S1R   PHILIP   FRANCIS 


28          THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

Junius  Brutus.'  But  Junius  Brutus  saw  the  absurdity 
of  the  conjunction  ;  answering, '  that  he  acknowledged 
the  relation  between  "  Cato  and  Portia,"  but  in  truth 
could  see  no  connection  between  Junius  and  a  minuet. 
His  age  and  figure,  too,'  he  said, '  would  have  done 
little  credit  to  his  partner.'  In  a  previous  letter 
Wilkes  had  said,  that  he  did  not  mean  to  indulge 
'the  impertinent  curiosity  of  finding  out  the  most 
important  secret  of  our  times,  the  author  of  "  Junius." 
He  would  not  attempt  with  profane  hands  to  tear 
the  veil  of  the  sanctuary.  He  was  disposed,  with 
the  inhabitants  of  Attica,  to  erect  "  an  altar  to  the 
unknown  god "  of  our  political  idolatry,  and  would 
be  content  to  worship  him  in  clouds  and  darkness.' 
Upon  which  not  inelegant  comparison,  Junius,  still 
keeping  his  state,  though  smiling  with  condescending 
pleasantry,  observes,  that  he  is  'much  flattered,  as 
Mr  Wilkes  politely  intended  he  should  be,  with  the 
worship  he  is  pleased  to  pay  to  the  unknown  god. 
I  find,'  he  continues,  '  I  am  treated  as  other  gods 
usually  are  by  their  votaries,  with  sacrifice  and 
ceremony  in  abundance,  and  very  little  obedience. 
The  profession  of  your  faith  is  unexceptionable  ;  but 
I  am  a  modest  deity,  and  should  be  full  as  well 
satisfied  with  good  works  and  morality.'  This  is 
admirable,  and  full  of  matter;  but  it  is  not  the 
style  that  could  have  occurred  between  John  Wilkes, 
Esquire,  Sheriff  of  London,  possessor  of  three  estab- 
lishments, and  Mr  Francis,  at  that  time  Clerk  in 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB          29 

the  War  Office,  and  in  the  habit  of  dining  at  his 
table.  We  must  add,  that  we  take  Lord  Chatham, 
Burke,  and  Earl  Temple,  to  have  been  in  the  secret 
of  '  Junius's  Letters ' ;  that  the  two  former  objects 
of  his  admiration  stimulated  his  manner,  and  that 
not  improbably  they  occasionally  furnished  him 
with  remarks.  Nor  would  it  have  surprised  us,  had 
Temple  turned  out  to  be  Junius  himself.  But  this 
is  not  the  place  for  discussing  the  question. 

We  take  the  opportunity  of  giving  a  variation  of 
the  story  which  Mr  Taylor  relates  respecting  the 
behaviour  of  Sir  Philip  at  the  table  of  George  the 
Fourth.  '  Sir  Philip,'  says  Mr  Taylor,  '  was  im- 
petuous, and  somewhat  abrupt  in  manner.  He  once 
interrupted  George  the  Fourth  at  the  royal  table 
(and  we  are  credibly  informed  that  he  frequently 
dined  there)  in  the  midst  of  a  tedious  story,  with 
a  "Well,  Sir,  well!'" 

Our  version  of  this  anecdote,  without  meaning  to 
impugn  Mr  Taylor's  authority,  which,  not  improb- 
ably, is  the  same  as  our  own,  differently  reported, 
is,  that  Sir  Philip  being  excessively  tired,  not  only 
with  the  story  in  question,  but  with  others  of  the 
same  sort  which  he  was  in  the  habit  of  hearing  at 
the  same  table,  interrupted  the  royal  narration  with 
the  politer,  but  not  less  significant  words :  '  Well, 
and  the  result,  Sir,  if  you  please.'  The  result 
was,  that  he  was  never  invited  more ;  and  our 
informant  added,  that  as  such  a  penalty  was  cer- 


3o         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

tain,  it  is  not  improbable  that  it  was  deliberately 
incurred. 

If  any  of  our  readers,  who  agree  with  Mr  Taylor 
in  thinking  Sir  Philip  Francis  to  have  been  Junius, 
should  regret  their  never  having  seen  that  once 
invisible  personage,  we  have  the  pleasure  of  inform- 
ing them,  that  the  portrait  prefixed  to  the  volume 
of  'Junius  Identified,'  is  a  fac-simile  of  the  man. 
We  met  Sir  Philip  once  coming  down  Bond  Street, 
and  knew  him  by  the  likeness. 


CHAPTER 
FOUR 


THE  vicissitudes  in  the  occupation  of  houses  are 
curious.  The  first  tenant  we  meet  with  in  Gore 
House  (we  forget  his  name)  is  a  Government  con- 
tractor who  was  so  stingy,  that  he  would  not  lay 
out  a  penny  to  keep  his  garden  in  order.  To  him 
succeeded  Mr  Wilberforce,  famous  in  the  annals  of 
evangelism  and  the  slave-trade.  The  next  dis- 
tinguished name  is  Lady  Blessington,  who  is  joined 
by  Count  d'Orsay.  Then  comes  Monsieur  Soyer, 
who  turns  the  place  into  an  eating-house  for  '  All 
Nations'  during  the  Great  Exhibition.  And  now 
it  has  been  bought  by  Government,  in  connexion 
with  the  new  views  for  the  cultivation  of  art. 

Wilberforce,  whose  head  was  not  strong  enough 
to  keep  him  out  of  the  pale  of  religious  bigotry,  but 
31 


32         THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB 

whose  heart  was  kindly,  and  his  temperament  happy, 
contrived  (though  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  even 
the  merriest  of  such  theologians  manage  it)  to  com- 
bine the  most  terrific  ideas  of  the  next  world  (for 
others)  with  the  most  comfortable  enjoyment  of  this 
world  in  his  own  person.  He  was  a  little  plain-faced 
man,  radiant  by  nature  with  glee  and  good-humour, 
very  'serious'  at  a  moment's  notice,  an  earnest 
devotee,  a  genial  host,  a  good  speaker  and  Member 
of  Parliament ;  now  siding,  and  now  differing,  with 
his  friend  Pitt ;  now  joining  in  devotion  with  Lord 
Teignmouth ;  now  laughing  heartily  with  Canning ; 
now  sighing  over  the  table-talk  of  the  Prince  Regent ; 
but  above  all,  deep  in  tractarianism,  and  at  the  same 
time  advocating  the  freedom  of  the  poor  negroes  ; 
which  was  by  no  means  the  case  with  all  persons  of 
his  way  of  thinking,  political  or  religious. 

'  About  a  year  and  three-quarters  ago/  says  this 
worthy  ultra  -  serio  -  comic  person,  '  I  changed  my 
residence,  and  found  myself  in  the  habitation  which 
my  family  now  occupies,  and  which  we  find  more 
salubrious  than  Clapham  Common.  We  are  just 
one  mile  from  the  turnpike  -  gate  at  Hyde  Park 
Corner,  which  I  think  you  will  not  have  forgotten 
yet,  having  about  three  acres  of  pleasure-ground 
around  my  house,  or  rather  behind  it,  and  several 
old  trees,  walnut  and  mulberry,  of  thick  foliage.  I 
can  sit  and  read  under  their  shade,  which  I  delight 
in  doing,  with  as  much  admiration  of  the  beauties 


OA^uNfc.J  .  Jf<_l_  .' 


WILLIAM  WILBERFORCE 


34          THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

of  nature  (remembering  at  the  same  time  the  words 
of  my  favourite  poet :  "  Nature  is  but  a  name  for  an 
effect,  whose  cause  is  God  "),  as  if  I  were  two  hundred 
miles  from  the  great  city.' 

This  is  excellent,  and  would  have  been  more  so 
if  Mr  Wilberforce  could  have  allowed  others,  not 
quite  of  the  same  creed,  to  have  the  same  right  to 
a  comfortable  enjoyment  of  nature,  and  the  same 
reputation  for  piety.  He  was  of  opinion  that  you 
must  be  continually  thinking  of  God,  otherwise  God 
would  be  very  angry.  As  if  the  Divine  Father 
could  not  dispense  with  these  eternal  references  to 
him  from  his  children,  or  would  burthen  them  with 
the  weight  of  even  too  much  gratitude!  Our 
prosperous  and  lively-blooded  saint,  however,  bore 
the  burthen  with  singular  vivacity,  owing  to  a  notion 
he  had  (hardly  burthened  with  modesty,  though  he 
always  professed  to  wonder  at  the  circumstance), 
that  he  was  a  special  favourite  of  God. 

His  meditations  down  Kensington  -  road  were 
certainly  very  different  from  those  of  Mr  Wilkes. 

'  Walked,'  he  says,  in  his  Diary,  '  from  Hyde  Park 
Corner,  repeating  the  ii9th  Psalm,  in  great  comfort.' 

This  is  the  longest  of  the  psalms,  extending  to  a 
hundred  and  seventy-six  verses,  full  of  pious  self- 
congratulation,  and  of  rebukes  of  its  deriders. 

An  anecdote  of  Wilberforce  in  connexion  with  the 
present  royal  family  we  reserve  for  our  notices  of  the 
Palace. 


THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB          35 

Of  the  successors  of  this  devout  person  in  the 
occupancy  of  Gore  House  so  much  has  been  said 
of  late,  in  consequence  of  the  appearance  of  a  book 
in  three  large  octavo  volumes,  entitled  '  The  Literary 
Life  and  Correspondence  of  the  Countess  of  Bless- 
ington,' that  readers  of  a  work  like  the  present  will 
probably  expect  us  to  give  our  opinion  on  the 
subject  at  greater  length,  than  would  otherwise  have 
been  the  case.* 

Marguerite  Gardiner  (not  Blessington,  as  the 
author  has  it,  misled  by  the  way  in  which  peeresses 
sign  their  names)  was  the  daughter  of  Edmund 
Power,  Esq.,  a  country  gentleman  of  small  property 
in  Ireland,  and  was  born  at  Knockbril,  near  Clonmel, 
in  the  county  of  Tipperary,  on  the  1st  of  September 
1790.  Her  father  appears  to  have  been  a  man  half 
mad  with  brutality.  At  the  age  of  fourteen  and  a 
half,  she  was  married  to  a  captain  in  the  army,  of 
the  name  of  Farmer,  whose  temper  is  said  to  have 
resembled  her  father's,  and  from  whom  she  separated  ; 
and,  in  her  eight-and-twentieth  year,  she  took  for  her 
second  husband,  Charles  John  (Gardiner),  Earl  of 
Blessington,  who  was  a  man  equally  half  mad  with 

*  The  feelings  of  the  book,  as  far  as  the  chief  persons  in  it  are 
concerned,  are  in  the  main  correct ;  and  the  author  might  have 
attained  the  repute  of  moderate  powers  of  reflection  and  an  altogether 
laudable  object ;  but  the  three  volumes  ought,  at  the  utmost,  to  have 
been  two  ;  and  the  manufactured  nature  of  the  rest  (to  say  nothing 
worse  of  it)  should  have  rendered  him  cautious  how  he  went  out  of 
his  way  to  censure  judgments  which  he  does  not  understand. 


36          THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB 

self-will,  though  in  a  quieter  shape,  with  the  addition 
of  prodigality  and  love  of  show.  All  these  persons 
helped  to  perplex  and  unsettle  her  character. 

During  a  space  of  eight  years,  Lord  and  Lady 
Blessington  travelled  and  resided  on  the  Continent 
— chiefly  in  Italy — accompanied  by  a  niece  of  her 
Ladyship's,  and  by  Count  Alfred  d'Orsay,  son  of 
General  Count  d'Orsay,  one  of  the  old  French 
noblesse.  The  young  Count  was  invited  to  be  of 
the  party  by  Lord  Blessington,  who  became  so 
extremely  attached  to  him  that  nothing  would 
content  him  but  Alfred  must  marry  one  of  his 
daughters  by  a  former  wife  (he  did  not  care  which), 
and  so  become  possessed  of  a  portion  of  his  estates. 
His  Lordship,  also,  after  the  death  of  his  only 
legitimate  son,  made  him  guardian  of  the  son's 
brother.  Alfred,  in  the  year  1827,  at  Naples, 
married  the  daughter,  without  love  on  either  side. 
Lord  Blessington  died  of  apoplexy  in  the  year  1829, 
at  Paris.  His  widow,  with  Count  and  Countess 
Alfred,  returned  to  England,  and  took  up  her  abode 
in  Seamore  Place,  May  Fair,  where  she  resided  till 
the  year  1836,  in  the  course  of  which  time  the 
married  couple  parted,  having  lived  together  ten 
years ;  and,  on  Lady  Blessington's  removal  from 
Seamore  Place  to  Kensington,  the  Count  accom- 
panied her  thither ;  and,  from  that  time  up  to 
their  departure  from  England,  appears  to  have 
resided  in  the  same  house,  with  the  exception  of 


THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB          37 

a  short  stay  at  the  little  domicile  before  mentioned. 
Lady  Blessington  was  then  in  her  forty-fifth  year, 
and  the  Count  in  his  thirty-fourth. 

The  house  soon  became  a  point  of  attraction, 
particularly  in  the  world  of  letters,  her  Ladyship, 
besides  giving  such  dinners  as  Dr  Johnson  would 
have  thought  'being  worth  asking  to,'  delighting  to 
bring  men  of  different  opinions  together,  for  the 
purpose  of  softening  asperities,  and  making  them 
take  a  liking  to  one  another,  on  better  acquaintance. 
In  this  benevolent  project  she  was  assisted  by  the 
Count ;  and  here,  accordingly,  with  somewhat  of  an 
excess  on  the  side  of  universality,  were  to  be  seen 
poets  and  prose  writers,  both  Tory  and  Whig,  dis- 
tinguished journalists,  Edinburgh  and  Quarterly 
reviewers,  with  actors,  artists,  travellers,  exiles,  etc., 
Landor  and  Thomas  Moore  being  the  leaders  among 
the  poets,  and  Prince  Louis  Napoleon  at  the  head 
of  the  exiles.  Every  celebrated  novelist,  in  parti- 
cular, naturally  made  one  of  a  circle,  over  which 
presided  the  charming  woman,  who  was  herself  a 
novelist. 

We  do  not  hear  of  ladies  among  the  visitors, 
though  the  Countess  appears  to  have  had  cordial 
female  friends.  This  was  a  defect,  however,  that 
was  to  be  looked  for  in  a  country  like  England,  in 
consequence  of  appearances  —  the  residence  in  the 
same  house  of  a  beautiful  widow  of  five-and-forty, 
with  a  model  of  a  man  aged  thirty-four,  suggesting, 


38          THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

it  seems,  no  possibilities  of  self-restraint  to  the 
sober  fancies  of  our  beloved  countrymen.  Yet,  in 
his  last  days,  when  the  hand  of  death  was  upon 
him,  the  Count  said  to  their  friend  and  biographer, 
the  tears,  all  the  while,  pouring  down  his  face,  '  She 
was  to  me  a  mother !  a  dear,  dear  mother !  a  true 
loving  mother  to  me ! '  And  referring  to  her  again, 
he  said,  '  You  understand  me.'  '  I  understood  him 
to  be  speaking  what  he  felt,'  continues  his  friend  ; 
1  and  there  was  nothing  in  his  accents,  in  his  position, 
or  his  expressions  (for  his  words  sounded  in  my  ears 
like  those  of  a  dying  man),  which  led  me  to  believe 
he  was  seeking  to  deceive  himself  or  me.' 

These  parties  at  Gore  House  have  been  com- 
pared with  those  of  Holland  House,  and  with  the 
companies  that  assembled  at  the  mansion  of  Lady 
Charleville.  Of  the  latter,  no  memorialist  has  en- 
abled us  to  speak ;  but,  with  the  former,  they 
appear  to  have  had  little  in  common,  except  the 
power  on  the  part  of  some  of  the  visitors  to  have 
furnished  it,  had  the  hostess  so  desired.  It  is 
stated  that  she  latterly  assumed  too  dictatorial  a 
manner,  and  that  the  parties  were  not  so  natural 
and  so  lively  as  they  had  been  in  Seamore  Place. 
This  may  have  been  owing,  partly  to  her  pursuit 
of  literature,  and  partly  to  a  sense  of  the  coming 
difficulties ;  and  there  was  one  drawback  on  the 
agreeableness  of  the  society,  and  even  on  the  bene- 
volence of  purpose  above  mentioned,  in  bringing 


COUNTESS  OF  BLESSINGTON 


40          THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

it  together,  which  we  should  not  have  expected  to 
find  in  any  society  of  the  like  description — to  wit, 
a  love  of  banter,  and  a  habit  of  what  is  called 
'  fetching  out '  people's  absurdities  and  self-com- 
mittals ;  a  practice,  generally  speaking,  which  none 
are  so  prompt  to  be  offended  with  as  the  '  fetchers 
out.'  But  the  habit,  instead  of  being  discouraged, 
was  flattered  ;  and  flattery,  of  one  kind  or  another, 
was  the  ruin  of  the  poor  handsome  Count  and 
Countess.  Nobody,  of  course,  contemplated  such 
a  result ;  and  the  flattery  was  very  natural ;  for 
they  were  accomplished  as  well  as  handsome  and 
kind-hearted  persons,  notwithstanding  that  mistake. 
The  establishment  broke  down  in  1849  under  a 
load  of  debt  for  party-giving,  for  dress,  for  jewellery, 
for  play  (on  the  part  of  the  Count),  and  even  for 
charity's  self  and  the  giving  of  pensions  ;  both  the 
friends  being  bountiful  to  the  poor,  one  of  them 
supporting  poor  relations,  and  the  other  helping  to 
do  as  much  for  poor  exiles.  For  though  it  is 
rightly  said  that  people  ought  to  be  just  before 
they  are  generous,  yet  when  tradesmen  give  long 
credits,  reckoning  upon  enormous  receipts,  their 
unreflecting  victims  naturally  suppose  they  can 
'wait,'  and  that  the  poor  had  better  be  helped 
first.  The  Count's  boots  and  hats  were  advertise- 
ments, for  the  sake  of  which  the  shoemakers  and 
hatters  were  content  to  wait,  till  things  looked 
awkward ;  and  then  the  long  credit,  having  served 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB          41 

the    purpose   of   an   usurious    patience,   was   to   be 
made  the  ground  of  a  realising  exasperation. 

The  downfall  was  unlocked  for  by  the  public, 
but  not  by  acquaintances.  Four  years  previous  to 
it  the  Count  was  so  embarrassed,  that  in  a  schedule 
of  his  liabilities  drawn  up  by  himself,  the  claims  of 
his  creditors  amounted  to  a  hundred  and  seven 
thousand  pounds ;  and  his  biographer  adds,  that 
there  were  debts  to  friends,  amounting  probably  to 
thirteen  thousand  more.  In  vain  the  Countess  kept 
an  eye  on  the  household  expenses ;  in  vain  she 
thought  to  turn  a  jointure  of  two  thousand  a-year 
into  four  thousand,  by  '  literature ' ;  in  vain  the 
Count  resorted  even  to  alchemy ;  in  vain,  as  a  last 
resource,  he  thought  to  benefit  by  those  fine  arts, 
in  which  he  excelled  as  an  amateur.  Time  was 
not  given  him  for  the  trial.  He  had  fled  to  Paris ; 
there  was  a  sale  of  the  goods  at  Gore  House ;  the 
Countess  followed  him ;  and  the  last  hope  of  the 
refugees  was  in  the  Prince  President  of  the  French 
Republic,  lately  the  favourite  guest  at  their  table, 
always  their  protege  and  type  of  progress.  But  the 
man  of  the  reserved  tongue  and  drooping  eyelids 
was  plotting  his  way  to  a  throne.  He  liked  neither 
the  sincerity,  nor  the  humanity,  of  his  once  cherished 
adviser,  the  Count ;  and  having  discarded  his  mistress, 
and  looked  for  a  wife,  he  probably  affected  a  new 
kind  of  reserve  with  the  Countess,  as  a  setter  of 
imperial  example.  The  poor  lady  died  of  apoplexy ; 


42          THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB 

which,  under  certain  kinds  of  trial,  means  a  shock 
of  despair ;  and  the  gentleman  only  received  an 
appointment,  when  it  was  too  late  for  him  to  dis- 
charge it.  Strong  and  fine  a  man  as  he  had  been, 
he  speedily  followed  her  to  the  grave,  aged  no 
more  than  fifty-one. 

The  secret  of  the  unlooked-for  deaths  of  these 
two  remarkable  persons  will  still  be  a  subject  for 
discussion ;  nor  do  we  profess  to  be  in  the  least 
degree  acquainted  with  it,  unless  it  be  explained  by 
appearances.  In  our  opinion,  these  are  quite  suffi- 
cient for  the  explanation.  They  had  taken  Louis 
Napoleon  for  a  man  of  feeling,  and  they  thought 
they  should  die  dishonoured,  or  doubted,  by  creditors 
— and  by  creditor  friends ;  for  the  proceeds  of  the 
sale  of  Gore  House  did  not  amount  to  more  than 
the  Count's  debts  to  his  friends,  and  what  would 
clamorous  tradesmen  say  to  those?  The  Countess, 
also,  was  to  subsist ;  and  what  was  she  to  do  for 
the  Count,  or  he  for  her?  Injured  in  hope,  in  health, 
and  in  expectation,  their  pangs  of  mind,  under  all 
the  circumstances,  may  naturally  have  been  enough 
to  kill  them  ;  and  we  believe  they  did.* 

*  It  is  proper  to  observe,  that  the  opinions  here  expressed  regarding 
Louis  Napoleon's  behaviour  to  the  Count  and  Countess  originate  in 
statements  made  by  their  friends,  and  that  a  counter-statement  on  his 
part  might,  of  course,  demand  for  them  a  new  consideration.  We  are 
loth  also  to  say  anything  against  the  ally  of  England  and  the  guest  of 
the  Queen  ;  and  willing  to  believe,  notwithstanding  his  antecedents,  that 
he  not  only  desires  to  promote  the  new  cordiality  between  France  and 


THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB          43 

As  to  the  other  and  more  delicate  secret,  nothing 
perhaps  is  or  can  be  known  of  it,  beyond  the  fact 
of  their  having  lived  in  the  same  house ;  which,  if 
considered  a  scandal  in  England,  and  of  evil  example 
(and  it  undoubtedly  was  so  considered,  and  very 
naturally),  is  to  be  judged  at  the  same  time  with 
reference  to  those  foreign  usages,  to  which  one  of 
them  had  been  born  and  bred,  and  the  other  (in 
residences  abroad)  accustomed. 

The  Count's  high-born  and  respected  kindred — 
his  mother  included — never  ceased  to  express  their 
esteem  and  affection  for  the  Countess ;  female  rela- 
tions of  hers,  themselves  esteemed  by  the  estimable, 
lived  with  her,  and  were  witnesses  of  her  habits ; 
and  if  it  be  asked  us,  whether  we  are  still  'green' 
enough  to  believe  that  there  was  nothing  in  the 
connection  beyond  the  ill-appearance  of  it,  we 
answer,  that  we  leave  those  to  believe  the  worst, 
who  choose  it ;  that  a  brave  man's  tears,  in  his 
dying  moments,  go  a  great  way  with  us ;  that  Irish 
and  French  vivacity  combined,  in  a  grave  country, 
might  be  tempted  or  provoked  into  hazarding  an 
amount  of  misconstruction,  inconceivable  to  our 

England  out  of  motives  better  than  merely  selfish  ones,  but  has  objects, 
rare  for  a  despot,  in  furtherance  of  the  good  of  the  poor  and  the  general 
progress  of  the  community.  But  those  antecedents,  and  the  melancholy 
doubts  taught  us  by  history,  forbid  the  best-disposed  of  his  observers  to 
take  promises  for  performance,  or  one  set  of  extremes  for  another.  The 
utmost  which  they  find  it  possible  to  do,  is  to  await  the  evidence  of 
events,  and  to  feel  no  wonder  in  the  meantime  at  the  incredulity  of 
the  consistent  and  the  outraged. 


44          THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB 

national  habits ;  and,  finally,  that  till  the  nation 
itself  is  bold  and  virtuous  enough  to  look  into  the 
cause  of  certain  other  habits  of  its  own,  which  it 
suffers  to  scandalise  its  towns  and  cities  in  open 
day,  beyond  those  of  any  other  country  in  Europe, 
it  had  better  draw  as  little  attention  as  possible  to 
comparisons  between  itself  and  its  neighbours. 

The  worst  thing  known  of  Count  d'Orsay,  is  his 
marriage  with  a  girl  of  fifteen,  without  love  on  either 
side,  in  compliance  with  the  wish  of  a  half  insane 
father,  and  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  a  fortune. 
In  an  Englishman,  this  would  have  been  very 
bad  conduct  indeed,  and  often  is.  At  least,  similar 
things  are  often  done  among  us,  if  not  precisely 
under  the  same  circumstances.  In  a  Frenchman, 
the  conduct  would  be  equally  bad,  if  he  reflected 
upon  it  apart  from  national  custom  ;  but  custom  in 
France,  or  in  Paris  (which  is  France  itself,  as  affects 
the  world),  has  rendered  marriage  in  general  not 
only  a  matter  of  understood  expediency,  but  of  an 
expediency  very  different  from  our  own,  both  as 
regards  the  restraints  of  its  antecedents,  and  the 
independence  of  its  results.  In  England,  the  ex- 
pediency is  practised,  but  with  conditions  as  inexor- 
able on  one  side,  as  they  are  lax  on  the  other ;  and 
hence,  among  other  causes,  the  national  scandal 
above  alluded  to. 

But  enough  of  these  questions  in  a  book  not 
intended  to  moot  them.  It  is  creditable  to  Count 


COUNT  D'ORSAY 


46          THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

d'Orsay  and  to  his  friends  in  general,  that  whatever 
fears  he  may  have  had  of  exceptions  in  particular 
instances,  they  retained  a  belief  in  his  good  qualities 
to  the  last,  and  this  too  not  only  in  spite  of  his 
pecuniary  difficulties,  but  even  of  the  obligations 
which  they  led  him  to  incur.  It  was  a  piece  of 
good  fortune,  which  many  a  poor  honest  man  must 
at  once  have  rejoiced  in  and  have  envied — rejoiced 
in,  to  think  that  good  intentions  are  not  always  to 
be  doubted  from  inability  to  carry  them  out ;  and 
envied,  because  it  was  out  of  his  power  to  cut  the 
same  redeeming  figure  of  personal  and  aristocratical 
enchantingness. 

In  the  interest  occasioned  by  the  rest  of  her  story, 
we  have  forgotten  to  speak  of  the  Countess  as  a 
writer ;  and  much  need  not  be  said.  She  had  an 
easy,  elegant,  and  sometimes  interesting  pen  ;  had 
the  art  of  recommending  liberal  and  amiable  opinions 
without  offending  conventionality ;  and  wrote  better 
than  any  one  else  on  the  character  of  her  acquaint- 
ance, Lord  Byron.  But  her  works  are  not  original 
or  strong  enough  to  last. 

The  ground  on  which  Gore  House  stands  forms 
part  of  the  district  which  is  to  be  occupied  by  the 
new  National  Gallery,  its  schools  of  art  and  science, 
and  its  bowers  for  the  exhibition  of  sculpture.  A 
display  of  cabinet  work  and  of  studies  from  the 
schools  of  art  has  already  commenced  operations, 
and  the  public  are  re-admitted  to  the  grounds.  All 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB          47 

this,  it  must  be  allowed,  is  a  good  absorption  of  the 
antecedent  individualities,  pleasant  as  some  of  them 
were ;  though  it  is  to  be  doubted,  whether  Mr 
Wilberforce's  ghost  will  be  quite  easy  at  the  sight 
of  the  Venuses  and  Apollos.* 

England,  a  teacher  of  nations  in  so  many  respects, 
is  but  now  discovering,  what  has  so  long  been  known 
to  Italy  and  partially  known  to  France — that  utility 
and  beauty,  instead  of  being  antagonists,  are  friends  ; 
that  the  one  without  the  other,  besides  being  in 
danger  of  falling  into  the  gross  and  the  sordid, 
cannot  thoroughly  work  out  its  purposes ;  form, 
and  proportion,  and  adaptation  of  means  to  ends, 
being  constituent  qualities  of  the  beautiful ;  and 
finally,  that  as  Nature,  far  from  disliking  the  beauti- 
ful, thought  fit  to  be  the  cause  of  it,  and  loves  it, 
and  deals  in  it  to  profusion,  often  in  the  very 
humblest  of  her  productions,  so  it  becomes  Art  to 
imitate  her  great  mistress  in  the  like  impartiality 
of  adornment,  and  show  us  what  opulence  and  what 
elevation,  in  the  scale  of  discerning  beings,  await 
the  perceptions  of  those,  whose  ideas  are  not  limited 
to  the  commonest  forms  of  the  desirable.  The  use 

*  The  observations  which  here  follow  on  the  cultivation  of  the 
Beautiful,  are  retained  in  the  present  book,  though  they  were  sug- 
gested by  a  transient  exhibition,  the  observations  on  which  are  retained 
for  the  same  reason  ;  namely,  because  it  is  hoped  they  refer  sufficiently 
to  general  principles  to  warrant  the  retention  of  the  particulars.  It  is 
hoped,  also,  that  they  may  be  considered  a  foretaste  of  what  the 
locality  is  intended  to  do  for  us  in  succeeding  exhibitions. 


4$         THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

of  art  itself  is  but  to  administer  to  our  satisfactions  ; 
and  the  use  of  beauty  is  to  refine  and  perfect  those 
satisfactions,  and  raise  them  by  degrees,  in  propor- 
tion as  we  cultivate  a  true  sense  of  it,  to  thoughts 
of  the  beauty  and  goodness  of  its  great  First  Cause. 
To  ask  with  a  sneer  what  is  the  use  of  beauty,  is 
to  ask  with  impiety  why  God  has  filled  the  universe 
with  beauty ;  why  he  has  made  the  skies  blue,  and 
the  fields  green,  and  vegetation  full  of  flowers,  and 
the  human  frame  a  model  for  the  sculptor,  and 
gifted  everything  in  existence  with  shape  and  colour. 
The  commonest  piece  of  grass,  with  the  straightness 
of  its  stem,  the  flowing  contrast  of  its  leaves,  and 
the  trembling  fulness  of  its  ears,  is  a  miracle  of 
beauty  : — so  rich  in  grace  and  suggestiveness  has 
it  pleased  Him  to  make  the  houses  of  the  very 
insects,  and  the  food  of  cattle !  Is  it  not  better  to 
discern  this,  in  addition  to  the  other  uses  of  grass, 
than  to  see  in  it  nothing  but  those  uses?  nothing 
but  hay  for  the  market,  and  so  much  return  of 
money  to  the  grower?  Very  good  things  both,  no 
doubt,  and  not  to  be  dispensed  with  ;  but  so  much 
the  more  requiring  the  accompaniment  of  nobler 
perceptions,  to  hinder  us  from  concluding  that  man 
was  made  to  live  by  '  bread  alone ' ;  that  is  to  say, 
by  the  satisfaction  of  his  material,  as  opposed  to 
his  spiritual  wants.  So  little  was  this  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  good  Emperor  and  philosopher,  Marcus 
Antoninus,  that  with  the  uncontemptuous  eye  of  a 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB          49 

sage,  and  with  a  curious  familiar  anticipation  of 
that  sense  of  the  picturesque  which  has  been  thought, 
by  some,  peculiar  to  modern  times,  he  directs  our 
attention  to  the  outside  of  a  very  loaf,  as  possessing 
something  graceful  and  attractive  in  its  ruggedness, 
or  what  an  artist  would  call  the  'freedom  of  its 
forms.'  The  whole  passage  in  his  '  Meditations,'  is 
itself  so  beautiful,  and  in  spite  of  his  want  of  thorough 
artistic  perception  as  to  form  and  line,  expands  into 
such  a  comprehensive  and  noble  sense  of  what  has 
been  termed  the  Art  of  Nature,  that  although  we 
have  already  kept  the  reader  standing  much  longer 
than  we  intended  at  the  steps  of  Gore  House  with 
this  prefatory  digression  on  such  matters,  we  are 
sure  he  will  be  pleased  at  having  it  laid  before  him. 
'  Such  things  as  ensue  upon  what  is  well  constituted 
by  nature,  have  something  graceful  and  attractive. 
Thus,  some  parts  of  a  well-baked  loaf  will  crack 
and  become  rugged.  What  is  thus  cleft  beyond 
the  design  of  the  baker,  looks  well  and  invites  the 
appetite.  So  when  figs  are  at  the  ripest,  they  begin 
to  crack.  Thus  in  full  ripe  olives,  their  approach 
to  putrefaction  gives  the  proper  beauty  to  the  fruit. 
Thus,  the  ladened  ear  of  corn  hanging  down,  the 
stern  brow  of  the  lion,  and  the  foam  flowing  from 
the  mouth  of  the  boar,  and  many  other  things,  con- 
sidered apart,  have  nothing  comely ;  yet  because 
of  their  connection  with  things  natural,  they  adorn 
them,  and  delight  the  spectator.  Thus,  to  one  who 
D 


50          THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB 

has  a  deep  affection  of  soul,  and  penetrates  into 
the  constitution  of  the  whole,  scarce  anything  con- 
nected with  nature  will  fail  to  recommend  itself 
agreeably  to  him.  Thus,  the  real  vast  jaws  of  savage 
beasts  will  please  him,  no  less  than  the  imitations 
of  them  by  painters  or  statuaries. 

'With  like  pleasure,  will  his  chaste  eyes  behold 
the  maturity  and  grace  of  old  age  in  man  or  woman, 
and  the  inviting  charms  of  youth.  Many  such 
things  will  he  experience,  not  credible  to  all,  but 
only  to  those  who  have  the  genuine  affection  of  soul 
to  nature,  and  her  works.'  * 

Yes,  most  excellent  Emperor !  and  the  same  might 
have  been  said  by  thee,  and  probably  was  said,  of 
the  commonest  objects  of  art  round  about  thee,  in 
thy  home  and  thy  goods  and  chattels,  thy  cabinets 
and  caskets  and  chains ;  for  art  is  nature's  doing 
also,  being  the  work  of  her  workmanship ;  man  and 
all  forms  and  graces  being  referable  to  her  sugges- 
tion. The  chair,  as  well  as  the  plant,  has  its  straight 
and  its  flowing  lines ;  the  casket  and  the  cabinet 
its  ornaments  of  fruit  and  foliage,  its  efflorescence 
in  metal  or  precious  stone ;  some,  their  figures  of 
men,  beasts,  and  birds  ;  and  all,  more  or  less,  their 
colours,  proportions,  and  uses. 

Shall  we  not  then  observe,  and,  as  much  as 
possible,  spiritualise  them  accordingly,  giving  them 

*  'Translation  of  the  Meditations.'     Glasgow,  1749. 


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THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB          51 

the  grace  and  beauty  which  Nature  suggests,  and 
so  rendering  them  assistants  of  our  best  perceptions 
against  our  worst  ?  For  effeminacy,  the  danger  of 
delight,  is  not  a  consequence  of  enjoyments  founded 
in  truth  and  in  the  spirit  of  things,  but  of  grovellings 
in  the  false  and  the  gross ;  not  a  consequence, 
therefore,  of  good  art,  but  of  bad  ;  of  art  lulling 
to  sleep  on  the  chair  for  the  mere  body's  sake,  and 
not  of  art  awakening  us  to  intellectual  perceptions, 
and  thus  dividing  the  empire  of  body  with  that  of 
mind. 

Luther  was  not  the  less  prepared  to  hazard 
martyrdom,  because  he  was  a  player  on  the  organ. 
Socrates  was  not  the  less  an  actual  martyr,  and 
one  of  the  greatest  of  men,  because  he  had  been 
a  sculptor,  and  wrought  figures  of  the  Graces. 

All  good  things,  as  well  as  all  bad  things,  hold 
together ;  truth,  strength,  right  perceptions  in  art ; 
falsehood,  weakness,  bad  taste.  Truth,  in  any  one 
respect,  is  good  for  truth  in  other  respects ;  and  it 
would  be  ridiculous  to  avoid  cultivating  anything 
which  is  right,  for  fear  of  its  degenerating  into 
what  is  wrong.  Upon  this  principle  we  might 
discommend  the  teaching  of  virtue  itself,  lest  it 
turn  sour,  and  become  austerity  or  hypocrisy.  Our 
duty  is  to  do  our  best,  and  leave  the  rest  to 
Providence. 

The  collection  at  Gore  House,  besides  tapestry, 
mirrors,  and  a  few  other  things,  consists  of  cabinet 


52          THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

work  in  oak,  walnut,  ebony,  etc.,  carved,  sculptured, 
inlaid,  sometimes  with  pictures,  oftener  in  the  Buhl 
style  of  ornamentation  ;  in  short,  presenting  all  the 
reigning  styles  of  treatment  from  the  latter  part  of 
the  fifteenth  century  to  the  close  of  the  eighteenth. 
There  are  cabinets,  coffers,  commodes,  buffets,  chairs, 
tables,  clocks,  drawers,  presses,  couches,  flower-stands, 
fire-screens,  and  even  pairs  of  bellows.  The  rooms, 
in  fact,  are  not  big  enough  to  hold  them  ;  so  that 
the  visitors  are  crowded  ;  and  as  the  materials  are 
chiefly  dark  and  ponderous,  the  general  effect,  not- 
withstanding occasional  gorgeousness,  is  heavy,  and 
even  somewhat  gloomy. 

You  might  imagine  that  the  fortunes  of  half-a- 
dozen  ancient  houses  had  been  suddenly  ruined,  and 
their  goods  and  chattels  despatched  in  haste  to  an 
auctioneer's  to  be  sold.  Better  justice  would  have 
been  done  to  the  individual  objects,  had  there  been 
space  enough  to  show  them  ;  for  all  productions  of 
art  have  so  much  to  do  with  proportion,  that  the 
proportions  even  of  the  spaces  round  about  them 
become  of  importance  to  their  display.  Perhaps, 
however,  it  was  not  easy  to  refuse  offers  from  con- 
tributors ;  variety,  too,  was  a  temptation ;  and  a 
liberal  abundance  is  welcome,  after  all,  even  at  the 
expense  of  inconvenience. 

The  Government  Commissioners,  with  great  judg- 
ment, have  drawn  attention  to  these  curiosities,  not 
as  models  for  indiscriminate  imitation,  but  as  illus- 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB          53 

trations  of  the  taste  of  successive  periods ;  as 
samples  of  merit  on  particular  points,  especially 
ornamentation  ;  and  in  several  instances,  as  warnings 
against  inconsistencies  and  bad  taste.  Foreigners, 
they  say,  can  teach  the  English  workman  nothing 
in  point  of  mechanical  fitness  and  completion,  but 
he  may  learn  much  from  them  in  the  art  of  decora- 
tion. This,  no  doubt,  is  true ;  and  we  hope  and 
believe  that  foreigners  and  nations  will  benefit  one 
another  by  these  exhibitions ;  the  Englishman 
learning  to  make  his  cabinets  elegant,  and  the 
Frenchman  and  Italian  to  make  their  keys  turn 
smartly,  and  their  drawers  come  forth  without 
sticking. 

We  cannot  greatly  admire  such  things  as  Buhl 
work ;  elaborations  of  brass  ornaments  upon  dark 
grounds.  We  prefer  the  inlayment  of  paintings, 
the  additions  of  bas-reliefs,  and  the  quaintest  old 
carvings  of  human  figures,  fruits,  etc.,  provided  they 
have  any  truth  of  expression.  Buhl  is  no  company 
—has  nothing  to  entertain  us  with,  but  its  unneces- 
sary flourishes. 

Gilding  is  something,  for  it  is  a  kind  of  sunshine. 
The  jumble  called  rococo  is,  in  general,  detest- 
able. A  parrot  seems  to  have  invented  the  word  ; 
and  the  thing  is  worthy  of  his  tawdriness  and  his 
incoherence.  We  confess,  however,  to  a  sneaking 
kindness  for  the  shepherds  and  shepherdesses  of 
the  times  of  the  Pompadours  and  the  Madame  du 


54          THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

Barrys.  They  were  the  endeavour  of  no-feeling  to 
get  at  some  feeling ;  '  to  assume  a  virtue  if  they 
had  it  not ' ;  to  play  at  lovers,  though  they  could 
only  be  gallants ;  nay,  let  us  do  our  best  for  them, 
and  say,  it  was  the  endeavour  to  conciliate  the 
remnant  of  truth  and  simplicity  lurking  in  their 
hearts,  and  to  persuade  themselves  what  a  golden- 
age  kind  of  people  they  were  intended  by  nature 
to  have  been,  provided  only  they  could  have  had 
their  own  way,  and  luxurious  suppers  instead  of 
bread  and  cheese. 

Many  of  these  extraordinary  pieces  of  furniture 
are,  nevertheless,  excellent  of  their  kind,  those  in 
the  rococo  style  not  excepted.  There  are  cabinets 
and  coffers  truly  worthy  of  holding  treasure ;  tables, 
at  which  it  would  be  an  elevation  of  mind,  as  well 
as  body,  to  sit ;  clocks,  that  symbolise  the  value  of 
time  (and  not  seldom  its  heaviness)  by  the  multi- 
plicity and  weight  of  their  ornamentation ;  and 
chairs,  which  sometimes  render  the  request  '  not  to 
touch,'  provoking ;  for  how  otherwise  are  we  to 
test  the  smoothness  of  the  '  Genoa  velvet ' ;  to  taste 
the  pleasure  of  sitting,  as  sovereigns  and  beauties 
sat ;  or  comfortably  to  contemplate  the  very  objects 
before  us,  considering  that  there  are  no  seats  in 
the  rooms  for  visitors,  and  that  pleasure  itself  is 
fatiguing  ? 

Some  interesting  memories,  also,  are  attached  to 
these  costly  moveables.  There  is  a  magnificent 


THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB          55 

writing-table,  ostentatiously  recording  some  of  the 
projects  of  the  famous  busy-body,  Beaumarchais, 
author  of  the  comedy  of  '  Figaro ' ;  a  Buhl  writing- 
table,  that  belonged  to  the  De  Retz  family ;  a  grand 
cabinet  in  pietra  dura  (precious  stones),  made  ex- 
pressly for  Louis  the  Fourteenth  ;  a  carved  Venetian 
coffer,  that  was  the  property  of  the  first  Earl  of 
Dorset,  the  poet,  the  worthy  precursor  of  Spenser ; 
and  another  Venetian  coffer,  adorned  in  wonderful 
alto  relievo  with  the  story  of  Caesar  crossing  the 
Rubicon,  most  life-like  and  masterly.  The  work 
is  dated  in  the  catalogue  'about  1560';  and  the 
arms  on  the  escutcheon  (a  lion  rampant  and  a  head 
in  a  cap)  are  stated  to  be  '  unknown.'  We  know 
not  the  arms  of  Caesar  Borgia,  otherwise  the  story 
is  just  like  one  of  the  allusions  of  that  energetic 
miscreant.  Or,  might  it  have  illustrated  some 
lawless  exploits  of  the  Malatesta  family,  one  of 
the  most  ferocious  of  whom  was  a  great  patron 
of  art? 

We  have  indulged  ourselves  at  such  length  in 
these  passing  notices  of  art  and  manufacture,  that 
we  must  dismiss,  with  a  somewhat  unpatriotic 
brevity,  the  other  part  of  the  Exhibition — the  copies 
from  originals  and  from  Nature  sent  in  by  students 
of  the  various  Government  Schools  of  Art,  estab- 
lished throughout  the  kingdom.  Indeed,  we  could 
take  no  very  long  view  of  them,  and  therefore  must 
not  be  understood  as  throwing  any  slur  upon  those 


56          THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

on  which  we  are  silent,  when  we  say  that  we  were 
most  struck  with  the  '  Flamingo '  of  Miss  Olden 
(No.  10) ;  the  '  Madre  Dolorosa'  (from  Carlo  Dolce?), 
by  Miss  Gunthorp  (No.  24) ;  the  '  Magdalen,'  from 
Correggio,  by  Mr  Bowen  (No.  27) ;  the  '  Money- 
getter  '  (we  know  not  from  whom),  by  Mr  Collinson 
(No.  32) ;  '  Fruit,'  by  Mr  Gibson  (No.  47) ;  the  '  Study 
of  Ornament  in  Colour,'  by  Mr  Ellison  (No.  101); 
and  those  after  '  Cuyp  and  Crivelli '  (each  wrongly 
referred),  by  Mr  Armytage.  The  '  Flamingo '  is 
admirably  coloured,  only  we  wish  he  looked  less 
like  an  ogre,  with  that  long  beak  of  his  holding 
the  eel.  It  is  all  true  to  nature,  no  doubt ;  but 
why  need  ornithological  painters  select  only  those 
moments  ?  The  '  Madre  Dolorosa '  is  very  dolorous, 
and  well  done ;  but  we  have  little  faith  in  the  per- 
manent dolour  of  those  cheeks.  This,  however,  is 
the  original's  fault,  and  not  the  copyist's.  For  the 
real,  natural  grief,  the  amiable,  surprised,  and  patient 
regret,  in  the  face  of  Correggio's  '  Magdalen,'  we 
are  most  thankful,  because  we  feel  certain  that  it 
brings  the  original  before  us  ;  which  cannot  be  said 
of  a  late  beautiful  engraving  of  the  subject,  very 
lovely,  but  not  at  all  sorrowful.  The  '  Fruit '  is 
partly  bruised  with  its  own  ripeness,  very  true  and 
beautiful.  The  '  Ornament  in  Colour '  is  truly  grace- 
ful and  consistent ;  hangs  charmingly  together  ;  and 
the  '  Cuyp  and  Crivelli '  carry  with  them  their  testi- 
mony to  the  fidelity  of  the  copies.  These  works 


THE    OLD     COURT   SUBURB          57 

are  all  upstairs ;  chiefly,  we  believe,  in  the  garrets. 
They  look  as  if  a  parcel  of  artists  had  fallen  in  love 
with  the  maid-servants,  and  hung  their  dormitories 
with  evidences  of  their  homage. 

Little  need  be  said  of  the  grounds  belonging  to 
Gore  House.  Turf  and  trees  are  good  things,  with 
or  without  flowers ;  and  the  grounds  are  of  un- 
expected dimensions,  considered  as  appurtenances 
to  a  suburban  residence ;  but,  as  Johnson  said  of  a 
dinner,  that  it  was  a  good  enough  dinner,  but  '  not 
a  dinner  to  invite  a  man  to,'  so  it  may  be  said  of 
the  Gore  House  grounds,  that  they  hardly  sustain 
the  dignified  announcement  of  being  'thrown  open 
to  the  public '  ;  especially  as  this  '  throwing  open ' 
is  confined  to  the  visitors  who  have  paid  their  way 
to  the  cabinet-work.  You  must  think  of  the  late 
fair  possessor,  Lady  Blessington,  to  give  an  interest 
to  their  pathways. 


CHAPTER   FIVE 

THE  estates  purchased  by  the  Commissioners  for 
the  site  and  grounds  of  the  new  National  Gallery 
include  those  just  described,  which  consist  of  about 
twenty  acres ;  and  it  will,  probably,  when  all  the 
purchases  are  completed,  approach  to  a  hundred. 
It  widens  as  it  goes  south,  and  reaches  to  Old 
Brompton. 

From  this  point  to  the  town  of  Kensington  we 
pass  houses  both  old  and  new,  some  in  rows,  and 
some  by  themselves,  enclosed  in  gardens.  They 
are  all  more  or  less  good  ;  and  the  turnings  out  of 
them  lead  into  a  considerable  district,  which  has 
lately  been  converted  from  nursery  and  garden- 
ground  into  more  streets,  and  is  called  Kensington 
New  Town.  It  is  all  very  clean  and  neat,  and 
astonishes  visitors  who  a  few  years  ago  beheld 
scarcely  a  house  on  the  spot.  A  pleasant  hedge- 
lane,  paved  in  the  middle,  and  looking  towards  the 
wooded  grounds  of  Gloucester  Lodge,  where 
Canning  lived,  leads  out  of  it  into  Old  Brompton. 
One  street,  which  has  no  thoroughfare,  is  quite  of 

58 


THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB          59 

a  stately  character,  though  deformed  at  the  corner 
with  one  of  those  unmeaning  rounded  towers, 
whose  tops  look  like  pepper-boxes,  or,  'Trifles 
from  Margate.'  The  smaller  streets  also  partake 
of  those  improvements,  both  external  and  internal, 
which  have  succeeded  to  the  unambitious,  barrack- 
like  streets  of  a  former  generation ;  nor  in  acquir- 
ing solidity,  have  they,  for  the  most  part,  been 
rendered  heavy  and  dumpy ;  the  too  common  fault 
of  new  buildings  in  the  suburbs.  It  is  ridiculous 
to  see  lumpish  stone  balconies  constructed  for  the 
exhibition  of  a  few  flower-pots ;  and  doors,  and 
flights  of  steps,  big  enough  for  houses  of  three 
stories,  put  to  'cottages'  of  one.  Sometimes,  in 
these  dwarf  suburban  grandiosities,  the  steps  look 
as  weighty  as  half  the  building ;  sometimes  the 
door  alone  reaches  from  the  ground  to  the  storey 
above  it ;  so  that  '  cottages '  look  as  if  they  were 
inhabited  by  giants,  and  the  doorways  as  if  they 
had  been  maximized,  on  purpose  to  enable  them 
to  go  in. 

This  Kensington  New  Town  lies  chiefly  between 
the  Gloucester  and  Victoria  Roads.  Returning  out 
of  the  latter  into  the  high  road,  we  pass  the  re- 
mainder of  the  buildings  above  noticed,  and,  just 
before  entering  Kensington  itself,  halt  at  an  old 
mansion,  remarkable  for  its  shallowness  compared 
with  its  width,  and  attracting  the  attention  by  the 
fresh  look  of  its  red  and  pointed  brick- work.  It 


60          THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB 

is  called  Kensington  House,  and  surpasses  Gore 
House  in  the  varieties  of  its  history ;  for  it  has 
been,  first,  the  habitation  of  a  king's  mistress ;  then 
a  school  kept  by  an  honest  pedant,  whom  Johnson 
visited  ;  then  a  French  emigrant  school,  which  had 
noblemen  among  its  teachers,  and  in  which  the 
late  Mr  Sheil  was  brought  up ;  then  a  Roman 
Catholic  boarding-house,  with  Mrs  Inchbald  for  an 
inmate ;  and  now  it  is  an  '  asylum,'  a  term  into 
which  that  consideration  for  the  feelings  which  so 
honourably  marks  the  progress  of  the  present  day, 
has  converted  the  plain-spoken  '  mad-house '  of  our 
ancestors. 

The  king's  mistress  was  the  once  famous  Duchess 
of  Portsmouth,  a  Frenchwoman, — Louise  de  Querou- 
aille, — who  first  came  to  England  in  the  train  of 
Henrietta,  Duchess  of  Orleans,  the  sister  of  Charles 
the  Second.  She  returned  ;  and  remained,  for  the 
express  purpose  (it  is  said)  of  completing  the 
impression  she  had  made  on  Charles,  and  assisting 
the  designs  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth  and  the  Jesuits 
in  making  him  a  Papist,  and  reducing  him  to  the 
treasonable  condition  of  a  pensioner  on  the  French 
Court.  Traitor  and  pensioner,  at  all  events,  his 
Majesty  became,  and  the  French  woman  became 
an  English  Duchess ;  but  whether  she  was  a  party 
to  the  plot,  or  simply  its  unconscious  instrument, 
she  has  hardly  had  justice  done  to  her,  we  think, 
by  the  historians.  She  appears  to  have  been  a 


THE  DUCHESS  OF  PORTSMOUTH 


62          THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB 

somewhat  silly  person  (Evelyn  says  she  had  a 
'  baby  face ')  ;  she  was  bred  in  France  at  a  time 
when  it  was  a  kind  of  sacred  fashion  to  admire 
the  mistresses  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth,  and  think 
them  privileged  concubines  ;  she  had  probably 
learnt,  in  the  convent  where  she  was  brought  up, 
that  lawless  things  might  become  lawful,  to  serve 
religious  ends ;  and  she  was  visited  during  her 
elevation  by  her  own  parents  —  straightforward, 
unaffected  people,  according  to  Evelyn — the  father 
a  'good  fellow,'  who  seems  at  once  to  have 
rejoiced  in  her  position,  and  yet  to  have  sought 
no  advantages  from  it.  The  Duchess,  it  is  true, 
ultimately  got  as  much  for  herself  as  she  could, 
out  of  the  King.  She  was  as  lavish  as  he  was ; 
became  poor,  a  gambler,  and  a  gourmande  ;  that 
is  to  say,  gave  way  to  every  innocent  propensity, 
as  she  might  have  thought  it,  which  came  across 
her ;  and  as  her  occupation  of  the  house  at 
Kensington  appears  to  have  been  subsequent  to 
the  reign  of  Charles,  it  probably  took  place  on  one 
of  her  visits  to  England  during  the  reigns  of 
William  the  Third  and  George  the  First ;  on 
which  latter  occasion  she  is  supposed  to  have 
endeavoured  to  get  a  pension  from  the  English 
Government — on  what  grounds  it  would  be  curious 
to  know.  But  the  '  baby  face '  probably  thought 
it  all  right.  We  take  her  to  have  been  a  thoroughly 
conventional,  commonplace  person,  with  no  notions 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB          63 

of  propriety  but  such  as  were  received  at  court, 
and  quite  satisfied  with  everything,  here  and  here- 
after, as  long  as  she  had  plenty  to  eat,  drink,  and 
play  at  cards  with,  and  a  confessor  to  make  all 
smooth,  in  case  of  collateral  peccadilloes.*  The 
jumble  of  things  religious  and  profane  was  carried 
to  such  a  height  in  those  days,  that  a  picture 
representing  the  Duchess  and  her  son  (the  infant 
Duke  of  Richmond)  in  the  characters  of  'Virgin 
and  Child,'  was  painted  for  a  convent  in  France, 
and  actually  used  as  an  altar-piece.  They  thought 
her  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of  God  for  the 
restoration  of  Popery. 

Adieu  to  the  '  baby-face,'  looking  out  of  the 
windows  at  Kensington  House,  in  hope  of  some 
money  from  King  George ;  and  hail  to  that  of  the 
good  old  pedagogue,  James  Elphinstone,  reformer 
of  spelling,  translator  of  '  Martial,'  and  friend  of  Dr 
Johnson.  He  is  peering  up  the  road  to  see  if  his 
great  friend  is  looming  in  the  distance ;  for  dinner 
is  ready,  and  he  is  afraid  that  the  veal  stuffed  with 

*  Our  countrymen,  who  hated  the  Duchess  because  she  was  a 
Frenchwoman  (and  with  reason,  considering  what  was  thought  to  be 
her  mission),  converted  her  name,  Querouaille,  into  Cat  well;  which 
was  nearer  perhaps  the  French  word  than  they  fancied  ;  for  Brittany, 
her  native  province,  received  a  portion  of  its  inhabitants  from  Cornwall, 
where  Car  and  //«^/are  component  words  ;  and  it  still  presents  names 
of  places  and  persons  corresponding  with  Cornish  appellations.  Among 
them  is  (or  was,  in  the  time  of  Madame  de  Sevigne)  a  family  of  the 
name  of  Cornouaillts ;  which  was  sometimes  written  Cornuel,  and 
is  the  way  in  which  they  spell  the  name  of  the  English  county. 


64          THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

plums  (a  favourite  dish  of  the  Doctor's)  will  be 
spoilt. 

Mr  Elphinstone  prospered  in  his  school,  but  failed 
in  his  reformation  of  spelling,  which  was  on  the 
phonetic  principle  (one  of  his  books  on  the  subject 
was  entitled  '  Propriety's  Pocket  Dictionary '),  and 
he  made  such  a  translation  of  '  Martial,'  that  his 
friend  Strahan,  the  printer — but  the  circumstance 
must  be  told  out  of  Boswell. 

GARRICK.  '  Of  all  the  translations  that  ever  were 
attempted,  I  think  Elphinstone's  "  Martial "  the  most 
extraordinary.  He  consulted  me  upon  it,  who  am 
a  little  bit  of  an  epigrammatist  myself,  you  know. 
I  told  him  freely,  "You  don't  seem  to  have  that 
turn."  I  asked  him  if  he  was  serious ;  and  finding 
he  was,  I  advised  him  against  publishing.  Why, 
his  translation  is  more  difficult  to  understand  than 
the  original.  I  thought  him  a  man  of  some  talents  ; 
but  he  seems  crazy  in  this.' 

JOHNSON.  '  Sir,  you  have  done  what  I  had  not 
courage  to  do.  But  he  did  not  ask  my  advice,  and 
I  did  not  force  it  upon  him,  to  make  him  angry  with 
me.' 

GARRICK.     '  But  as  a  friend,  Sir.' 

JOHNSON.  '  Why,  such  a  friend  as  I  am  with 
him — no.' 

GARRICK.  'But  if  you  see  a  friend  going  to 
tumble  over  a  precipice  ? ' 

JOHNSON.     '  That    is    an    extravagant    case,   Sir. 


DAVID  GARRICK 


66         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

You  are  sure  a  friend  will  thank  you  for  hindering 
him  from  tumbling  over  a  precipice ;  but,  in  the 
other  case,  I  should  hurt  his  vanity,  and  do  him 
no  good.  He  would  not  take  my  advice.  His 
brother-in-law,  Strahan,  sent  him  a  subscription  of 
fifty  pounds,  and  said  he  would  send  him  fifty  more, 
if  he  would  not  publish/ 

GARRICK.  '  What,  eh !  is  Strahan  a  good  judge  of 
an  epigram  ?  Is  he  not  rather  an  obtuse  man,  eh  ? ' 

JOHNSON.  '  Why,  Sir,  he  may  not  be  a  judge  of 
an  epigram  ;  but  you  see  he  is  a  judge  of  what  is 
not  an  epigram.' 

That  our  readers  may  judge  for  themselves,  espe- 
cially as  the  book  is  very  rare,  and  nobody  who 
speaks  of  Elphinstone  quotes  it,  we  add  a  specimen 
or  two.  We  confess  they  are  not  '  favourable  speci- 
mens ' ;  but  they  are  not  unjust 

'TO  THE  SUBSCRIBER 

'  If  Martial  meekly  woo'd  Subscription's  charms, 
Subscription,  gracious,  met  a  Martial's  arms  ; 
Contagious  taste  illum'd  th'  imperial  smile, 
And,  Julius'  greater,  Martial,  won  our  ile.' 

BOOK  IV.,  PART  II.,  EPIGRAM  l6. 

'  ON  APOLLODORUS— TO  REGULUS 
'  Five  for  Ten,  and  for  Lusty  he  greeted  you  Lean, 

As  for  Free  he  saluted  you  Bond. 
Now  he,  Ten,  Free,  and  Lusty  articulates  clean. 
Oh  !  what  pains  can  !     He  wrote,  and  he  conn'd.' 

Not   a   word   of  explanation ;   though   the   book   is 


THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB          67 

full  of  the  longest  and  most  superfluous  comments. 
It  is  a  quarto  of  six  hundred  pages,  price  a  guinea 
in  boards ;  and  among  its  hundreds  of  subscribers 
are  the  leading  nobility  and  men  of  letters.  So 
prosperous  had  some  real  learning  and  a  good 
character  rendered  the  worthy  schoolmaster.* 

Elphinstone  had  won  Johnson's  heart  by  taking 
charge  of  a  Scotch  edition  of  the  '  Rambler.'  He 
also  translated  the  Latin  mottoes  at  the  head  of 
the  papers ;  and  did  it  in  a  manner  that  gave  little 
or  no  token  of  the  coming  '  Martial.'  Johnson, 
Jortin  (of  whom  more  hereafter),  and,  we  believe, 
Franklin,  visited  him  at  this  house. 

'  I  am  going  this  evening  (says  Johnson)  to  put 
young  Otway  to  school  with  Mr  Elphinstone.'  t 

Otway  is  an  interesting  name.  One  should  like 
to  know  whether  he  was  of  the  poet's  race.  It  is 
pleasant,  also,  to  fancy  the  Doctor,  then  in  his  sixty- 
fourth  year,  walking  hand-in-hand  down  the  road 
with  the  little  boy. 

'On  Monday,  April  19,  1773,  he  called  on  me,' 
says  Boswell,  'with  Mrs  Williams,  in  Mr  Strahan's 
coach,  and  carried  me  out  to  dine  with  Mr  Elphin- 


*  'The  Epigrams  of  Mr  Val.  Martial,  in  Twelve  Books:  with  a 
Comment,  by  James  Elphinstone.'  1782.  It  is  due  to  Mr  Hookham  to 
state,  that  we  found  this  rare  volume  in  his  excellent,  indeed  unique, 
circulating  library,  which  contains  the  miscellaneous  reading  of  several 
generations. 

t  Letter  to  Mrs  Thrale. 


68         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

stone,  at  his  academy  at  Kensington.  Mr  Elphin- 
stone  talked  of  a  new  book  that  was  much  admired, 
and  asked  Dr  Johnson  if  he  had  read  it.' 

'  I  have  looked  into  it.' 

'What,'  said  Elphinstone,  'have  you  not  read  it 
through  ? ' 

Johnson,  offended  at  being  thus  pressed,  and  so 
obliged  to  own  his  cursory  mode  of  reading,  answered 
tartly,  '  No,  Sir.  Do  you  read  books  through  ? '  * 

The  book  that  was  '  much  admired,'  was  probably 
one  that  differed  with  Boswell  and  the  Doctor  in 
opinion,  otherwise  his  biographer,  who  is  full  of 
shabby  suppressions  of  this  kind,  might  have  added 
the  title,  or  not  have  mentioned  the  work  at  all. 

It  is  said  in  Faulkner's  '  History  of  Kensington,' 
that  Elphinstone  was  'ludicrously  characterised  in 
Smollett's  "Roderick  Random,"  which,  in  consequence, 
became  a  forbidden  book  in  the  school.'  But  none 
of  the  brutal  schoolmasters  of  Smollett  resemble  the 
gentle  pedagogue  of  Kensington.  The  book  might 
have  been  forbidden  out  of  consideration  for  the 
common  character  of  the  profession  ;  to  say  nothing 
of  other  reasons. 

*  Croker's  'Boswell,'  vol.  viii.  p.  267. 


CHAPTER 

SIX 


BUT  we  must  not  stop  longer  with  Mr  Elphinstone. 
Of  the  school  kept  by  Jesuits,  an  account  so  enter- 
taining has  been  left  by  Mr  Sheil  in  the  Memoirs 
prefixed  to  the  volume  of  his  Speeches,  that,  al- 
though it  is  somewhat  long,  the  reader,  we  are  sure, 
will  be  glad  to  have  the  whole  of 
it,  especially  as  it  does  not  seem 
to  be  generally  known,  and  the 
regrets  of  the  world  are  yet  fresh 
at  the  loss  of  that  distinguished 
orator  and  Member  of  Parliament. 
How  the  smile  of  the  French 
Abbe\  '  made  up  of  guile  and  meek- 
ness/ could  deserve  to  be  called 
'amiable,  in  the  best  sense  of  the 
word/  we  cannot  say.  But  nothing 
can  surpass  the  descriptions  of  the 
rest  of  the  little  man,  glossy  all 
over  with  his  black  silk  habili- 
ments ;  of  the  emigrant  school- 
boys rejoicing  in  the  victories  ob- 
tained by  the  country  which  had 
69 


70         THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB 

rejected  them,  at  the  expense  of  that  which  had 
given  them  shelter ;  and  of  poor  unteachable 
Charles  the  Tenth,  thrilling  at  the  names  of  the 
little  boys  introduced  to  him,  and  not  foresee- 
ing that  he  would  have  to  thrill  at  them  over 
again,  after  repossessing  the  throne  of  France  to  no 
purpose. 

'  I  landed  at  Bristol,'  says  Mr  Sheil,  recording 
his  first  coming  from  Ireland,  'and  with  a  French 
clergyman,  the  Abb6  de  Grimeau,  who  had  been 
my  tutor,  I  proceeded  to  London.  The  Abb6 
informed  me,  that  I  was  to  be  sent  to  Kensington 
House,  a  college  established  by  the  Peres  de  la  Foi, 
for  so  the  French  Jesuits  settled  in  England  at  that 
time  call  themselves ;  and  that  he  had  directions  to 
leave  me  there  upon  his  way  to  Languedoc,  from 
whence  he  had  been  exiled  in  the  Revolution,  and 
to  which  he  had  been  driven  by  the  maladie.  de  pays 
to  return.  Accordingly,  we  set  off  for  Kensington 
House,  which  is  situated  exactly  opposite  the  avenue 
leading  to  the  Palace,  and  has  the  beautiful  garden 
attached  to  it  in  front.  A  large  iron  gate,  wrought 
into  rusty  flowers,  and  other  fantastic  forms,  showed 
that  the  Jesuit  school  had  once  been  the  residence 
of  some  person  of  distinction ;  and  I  afterwards 
understood,  that  a  mistress  of  Charles  the  Second 
lived  in  the  spot  which  was  now  converted  into  one 
of  the  sanctuaries  of  Ignatius.  It  was  a  large,  old- 
fashioned  house,  with  many  remains  of  decayed 


THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB          71 

splendour.  In  a  beautiful  walk  of  trees,  which  ran 
down  from  the  rear  of  the  building  through  the 
play-ground,  I  saw  several  French  boys  playing  at 
swing-swang ;  and  the  moment  I  entered,  my  ears 
were  filled  with  the  shrill  vociferations  of  some 
hundreds  of  little  emigrants,  who  were  engaged  in 
their  various  amusements,  and  babbled,  screamed, 
laughed,  and  shouted,  in  all  the  velocity  of  their 
rapid  and  joyous  language.  I  did  not  hear  a  word 
of  English,  and  at  once  perceived  that  I  was  as 
much  amongst  Frenchmen  as  if  I  had  been  suddenly 
transferred  to  a  Parisian  college.  Having  got  this 
peep  at  the  gaiety  of  the  school,  into  which  I  was 
to  be  introduced,  I  was  led  with  my  companion  to 
a  chamber  covered  with  faded  gilding,  and  which 
had  once  been  richly  tapestried  ;  where  I  found  the 
head  of  the  establishment,  in  the  person  of  a  French 
nobleman,  Monsieur  le  Prince  de  Broglie.  Young 
(as  I  was,  I  could  not  help  being  struck  at  once 
with  the  contrast  which  was  presented  between  the 
occupations  of  this  gentleman  and  his  name.  I  saw 
in  him  a  little,  slender,  and  gracefully  constructed 
Abb6  with  a  sloping  forehead,  on  which  the  few 
hairs  that  were  left  him  were  nicely  arranged,  and 
well  powdered  and  pomatumed.  He  had  a  gentle 
smile,  full  of  suavity  which  was  made  up  of  guile 
and  of  weakness,  but  which  deserved  the  designation 
of  amiable,  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word.  His 
clothes  were  adapted  with  a  peculiar  nicety  to  his 


72         THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB 

symmetrical  person ;  and  his  silk  waistcoat  and 
black  stockings,  with  his  small  shoes  buckled  with 
silver,  gave  him  altogether  a  glossy  aspect  This 
was  the  son  of  the  celebrated  Marshal  Broglie,  who 
was  now  the  head  of  a  school,  and  notwithstanding 
his  humble  pursuits,  was  designated  by  everybody 
as  "  Monsieur  le  Prince." 

'  Monsieur  le  Prince  had  all  the  manners  and 
attitudes  of  the  Court,  and  by  his  demeanour  put 
me  at  once  in  mind  of  the  old  regime.  He  welcomed 
my  French  companion  with  tenderness,  and  having 
heard  that  he  was  about  to  return  to  France,  the 
poor  gentleman  exclaimed,  "  H61as ! "  while  the 
tears  came  into  his  eyes  at  the  recollection  of  "  cette 
belle  France,"  which  he  was  never,  as  he  thought, 
to  see  again.  He  bade  me  welcome.  These  pre- 
liminaries of  introduction  having  been  gone  through, 
my  French  tutor  took  his  farewell ;  and  as  he 
embraced  me  for  the  last  time,  I  well  remember, 
that  he  was  deeply  affected  by  the  sorrow  which 
I  felt  in  my  separation  from  him,  and  turning  to 
Monsieur  le  Prince,  recommended  me  to  his  care 
with  an  emphatic  tenderness.  The  latter  led  me 
into  the  school-room,  where  I  had  a  desk  assigned 
to  me  beside  the  son  of  the  Count  Decar,  who  has 
since,  I  understand,  risen  to  offices  of  very  high 
rank  in  the  French  Court  His  father  belonged  to 
the  nobility  of  the  first  class.  In  the  son,  it  would 
have  been,  at  that  time,  difficult  to  detect  his 


THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB          73 

patrician  derivation.  He  was  a  huge,  lubberly 
fellow,  with  thick  matted  hair,  which  he  never 
combed.  His  complexion  was  greasy  and  sudorific, 
and  to  soap  and  water  he  seemed  to  have  such  a 
repugnance,  that  he  did  not,  above  once  a  week, 
go  through  any  process  of  ablution.  He  was  surly, 
dogged,  and  silent,  and  spent  his  time  in  the  study 
of  mathematics,  for  which  he  had  a  good  deal  of 
talent.  I  have  heard  that  he  is  now  one  of  the 
most  fashionable  and  accomplished  men  about  the 
Court,  and  that  this  Gorgonius  smells  now  of  the 
pastiles  of  Rufillus.* 

'  On  the  other  side  of  me  was  a  young  French 
West  Indian,  from  the  colony  of  Martinique,  whose 
name  was  Devarieux.  The  school  was  full  of  the 
children  of  the  French  planters,  who  had  been  sent 
over  to  learn  English  among  the  refugees  from  the 
Revolution.  He  was  an  exceedingly  fine  young  fellow, 
the  exact  reverse  in  all  his  habits  to  Monsieur  le 
Comte  De"car  on  my  left  hand,  and  expended  a  good 
deal  of  his  hours  of  study  in  surveying  a  small 
pocket-mirror,  and  in  arranging  the  curls  of  his 
rich  black  hair,  the  ambrosial  plenty  of  which  was 
festooned  above  his  temples,  and  fell  profusely 
behind  his  head. 

'  Almost  all  the  French  West  Indians  were  vain, 
foppish,  generous,  brave,  and  passionate.  They  ex- 

*  Pastilles  Rufillus  olet,  Gorgonius  hircum. 


74         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

hibited  many  of  the  qualities  which  we  ascribe  to 
the  natives  of  our  own  islands  in  the  American 
Archipelago ;  they  were  a  sort  of  Gallican  Belcours 
in  little  ;  for  with  the  national  attributes  of  their 
forefathers,  they  united  much  of  that  vehemence, 
and  habit  of  domination,  which  a  hot  sun  and  West 
India  overseership  are  calculated  to  produce.  In 
general,  the  children  of  the  French  exiles  amal- 
gamated readily  with  these  Creoles :  there  were,  to 
be  sure,  some  points  of  substantial  difference ;  the 
French  West  Indians  being  all  rich  roturiers,  and 
the  little  emigrants  having  their  veins  full  of  the 
best  blood  of  France,  without  a  groat  in  their  pockets. 
But  there  was  one  point  of  reconciliation  between 
them — they  all  concurred  in  hating  England  and 
its  government.  This  detestation  was  not  very 
surprising  in  the  West  Indian  French  ;  but  it  was 
not  a  little  singular,  that  the  boys,  whose  fathers 
had  been  expelled  from  France  by  the  Revolution, 
and  to  whom  England  had  afforded  shelter,  and 
given  bread,  should  manifest  the  ancient  national 
antipathy,  as  strongly  as  if  they  had  never  been 
nursed  at  her  bosom,  and  obtained  their  aliment 
from  her  bosom. 

'  Whenever  news  arrived  of  a  victory  won  by 
Bonaparte,  the  whole  school  was  thrown  into  a 
ferment ;  and  I  cannot,  even  at  this  distance  of 
time,  forget  the  exultation  with  which  the  sons  of 
the  decapitated,  or  the  exile,  hailed  the  triumph 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB          75 

of  the  French  arms,  the  humiliation  of  England, 
and  the  glory  of  the  nation  whose  greatness  they 
had  learned  to  lisp.  There  was  one  boy  I  recollect 
more  especially.  I  do  not  now  remember  his  name, 
but  his  face  and  figure  I  cannot  dismiss  from  my 
remembrance.  He  was  a  little  effeminate  creature, 
with  a  countenance  that  seemed  to  have  been  com- 
pounded of  the  materials  with  which  waxen  babies 
are  made ;  his  fine  flaxen  hair  fell  in  girlish  ringlets 
about  his  face,  and  the  exquisite  symmetry  of  his 
features  would  have  rendered  him  a  fit  model  for  a 
sculptor,  who  wished  to  throw  the  beau  ideal  of  pretty 
boyhood  into  stone.  He  had  upon  him  a  sickly 
expression,  which  was  not  sufficiently  pronounced 
to  excite  any  disagreeable  emotion,  but  cast  over 
him  a  mournful  look,  which  was  seconded  by  the 
calamities  of  his  family,  and  added  to  the  lustre  of 
misfortune  which  attended  him.  He  was  the  child 
of  a  nobleman  who  had  perished  in  the  Revolution. 
His  mother,  a  widow,  who  resided  in  a  miserable 
lodging  in  London,  had  sent  him  to  Kensington 
House,  but  it  was  well  known  that  he  was  received 
there  by  the  Prince  de  Broglie  from  charity ;  and 
I  should  add,  that  his  eleemosynary  dependence, 
so  far  from  exciting  towards  him  any  of  that  pity 
which  is  akin  to  contempt,  contributed  to  augment 
the  feeling  of  sympathy  which  the  disasters  of  his 
family  had  created  in  his  regard.  This  unfortunate 
little  boy  was  a  Frenchman  to  his  heart's  core,  and 


76         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

whenever  the  country  which  was  wet  with  his  father's 
blood  had  added  a  new  conquest  to  her  possessions, 
or  put  Austria  or  Prussia  to  flight,  his  pale  cheek 
used  to  flush  into  a  hectic  of  exultation,  and  he 
would  break  into  joyfulness  at  the  achievements  by 
whcih  France  was  exalted,  and  the  pride  and  power 
of  England  were  brought  down.  This  feeling,  which 
was  conspicuous  in  this  little  fellow,  ran  through 
the  whole  body  of  Frenchmen,  who  afforded  very 
unequivocal  proof  of  the  sentiments  by  which  their 
parents  were  influenced.  The  latter  I  used  occa- 
sionally to  see.  Old  gentlemen,  the  neatness  of 
whose  attire  was  accompanied  by  indications  of 
indigence,  used  occasionally  to  visit  Kensington 
House.  Their  elasticity  of  back,  the  frequency  and 
gracefulness  of  their  well-regulated  bows,  and  the 
perpetual  smile  upon  their  wrinkled  and  emaciated 
faces,  showed  that  they  had  something  to  do  with 
the  "  vieille  cour,"  and  this  conjecture  used  to  be 
confirmed  by  the  embrace  with  which  they  folded  the 
little  marquises  and  counts  whom  they  came  to  visit. 
'  Kensington  House  was  frequented  by  emigrants 
of  very  high  rank.  The  father  of  the  present  Duke 
de  Grammont,  who  was  at  this  school,  and  was  then 
Duke  de  Quiche,  often  came  to  see  his  son.  I  re- 
collect upon  one  occasion  having  been  witness  to 
a  very  remarkable  scene.  Monsieur,  as  he  was  then 
called,  the  present  King  of  France,  waited  one  day, 
with  a  large  retinue  of  French  nobility,  upon  the 


THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB         77 

Prince  de  Broglie.  The  whole  body  of  the  school- 
boys was  assembled  to  receive  him.  We  were 
gathered  in  a  circle  at  the  bottom  of  a  flight  of  stone 
stairs,  that  led  from  the  principal  room  into  the 
playground.  The  future  King  of  France  appeared, 
with  his  cortege  of  illustrious  exiles,  at  the  glass 
folding-doors  which  were  at  the  top  of  the  stairs, 
and  the  moment  he  was  seen,  we  all  exclaimed  with 
a  shrill  shout  of  beardless  loyalty,  "  Vive  le  Roi !  " 
Monsieur  seemed  greatly  gratified  by  this  spectacle, 
and  in  a  very  gracious  and  condescending  manner 
went  down  amongst  the  little  boys,  who  were  at 
first  awed  a  good  deal  by  his  presence,  but  were 
afterwards  speedily  familiarised  to  him  by  the  natural 
benignity  of  Charles  the  Tenth.  He  asked  the 
names  of  those  who  were  about  him,  and  when  he 
heard  them,  and  saw  in  the  boys  by  whom  he  was 
encompassed  the  descendants  of  some  of  the  noblest 
families  of  France,  he  seemed  to  be  sensibly  affected. 
One  or  two  names,  which  were  associated  with 
peculiarly  melancholy  recollections,  made  him  thrill. 
"  Helas !  mon  enfant !  "  he  used  to  say,  as  some  orphan 
was  brought  up  to  him ;  and  he  would  then  lean 
down  to  caress  the  child  of  a  friend  who  had  perished 
on  the  scaffolds  of  the  Revolution.'  * 

Poor  Charles  the  Tenth !  himself  one  of  the  least 

*  'The  Speeches  of  the  Right  Honourable  Richard  Lalor  Sheil, 
M.P.,  with  a  Memoir,  etc.'  Edited  by  Thomas  Macneven,  Esq., 
Barrister-at-Law.  1845,  P-  ll- 


78         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

of  children  in  the  greatest  of  schools,  adversity ; 
which  he  left,  only  to  be  sent  back  to  it,  and  die. 
While  these  extracts  of  ours  respecting  the  school- 
master and  school-fellows  of  Mr  Sheil  have  been 
going  through  the  press,  we  have  had  the  pleasure 
of  seeing  a  piece  of  biography  make  its  appear- 
ance, at  once  loving  and  candid,  which  enables  us 
to  add  to  them  a  highly  characteristic  portrait,  in 
his  school-days,  of  the  distinguished  Irishman  him- 
self. It  was  furnished  to  the  author  by  a  learned 
judge  (Mr  Justice  Ball),  who  had  been  one  of  his 
school-fellows.  '  His  first  appearance  (he  says)  I 
recollect  well ;  it  was  strikingly  grotesque.  His 
face  was  pale  and  meagre ;  his  limbs  lank  ;  his 
hair  starting  upwards  from  his  head  like  a  brush ; 
a  sort  of  muscular  action  pervading  his  whole 
frame ;  his  dress  foreign  ;  his  talk  broken  English, 
and  his  voice  a  squeak.  Add  to  this  a  pair  of 
singularly  brilliant  eyes,  lighting  up  all  the  pecu- 
liarities of  his  figure,  and  you  have  before  you 
the  boy  Sheil.  His  performances  were  at  first  as 
singular  as  his  person.  His  efforts  to  kick  a  foot- 
ball were  sui  generis.  He  never  engaged  in  the 
game  along  with  the  other  boys,  but  kept  aloof, 
occupied  in  reading,  or  walking  about  the  play- 
ground ;  but  whenever  the  ball  was  thrown  across 
his  path,  he  used  to  dart  at  it  with  frantic  energy, 
.his  legs  and  arms  all  pretty  equally  on  the  stretch, 
so  that  it  was  out  of  the  question  to  determine 


THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB          79 

with  what  limb  he  would  assail  the  ball,  until  a 
kick  at  it,  probably  from  the  left  leg,  solved  the 
problem  ;  and  then  back  he  would  go  to  his  reading, 
amid  the  yells  of  the  urchins,  enraged  at  his  dis- 
turbing their  game.'  * 

For  characters  of  the  full-grown  Sheil,  bodily 
and  mental,  who  for  the  most  part  was  a  rare  and 
most  interesting  compound  of  far-sighted  judgment 
and  immediate  impulse,  we  must  refer  to  the  work 
itself.  Sheil  was  not  an  unprosperous  man ;  but 
he  ought  to  have  been  still  more  prosperous,  and 
lived  to  combine  old  age  with  a  sort  of  perennial 
youth ;  for  such  was  the  tendency  of  his  nature. 

We  know  not  how  long  the  school  of  the  Abb6 
de  Broglie  lasted  ;  but  in  the  year  1819,  Kensington 
House  was  a  Catholic  boarding  establishment,  kept 
by  a  Mr  and  Mrs  Salterelli. 

'  In  the  chapel,'  says  Boaden,  in  his  '  Memoirs  of 
Mrs  Inchbald,'  '  the  Archbishop  of  Jerusalem  per- 
formed mass  regularly  during  the  early  part  of  his 
residence ;  and  the  Abb6  Mathias  officiated,  when 
the  Primate  quitted  the  house.  The  society  was 
extremely  genteel  and  cheerful,  changing,  however, 
too  frequently  for  perfect  cordiality  and  the  forma- 
tion of  intimacy.  The  Schiavonettis,  however,  seem 
to  be  acquaintances ;  and  Mrs  Beloe,  and  Mr  Skeene 

*  '  Memoirs  of  the  Right  Honourable  Richard  Lalor  Sheil.'  By 
W.  Torrens  M'Cullagh,  author  of  the  '  Industrial  History  of  Free 
Nations,  etc.'  Vol.  i.  p.  23. 


8o         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

from  Aberdeen,  were  old  friends,  who,  on  their 
arrival,  met  with  an  unlocked  -  for  pleasure — the 
celebrated  artists,  Mr  and  Mrs  Cosway,  upon  leav- 
ing Stratford  Place,  were  at  Kensington  House 
from  August  to  October,  before  they  settled  upon 
a  house  in  the  Edgeware  Road.'* 

Here  Mrs  Inchbald  spent  the  last  two  years  of 
her  life  ;  and  here,  on  the  1st  of  August  1821,  she 
died  ;  we  fear — how  shall  we  say  it  of  so  excellent 
a  woman,  and  in  the  sixty-eighth  year  of  her  age  ? — 
of  tight-lacing.  But  she  had  been  very  handsome, 
was  still  handsome,  was  growing  fat,  and  had  never 
liked  to  part  with  her  beauty.  Who  that  is  beauti- 
ful does  ? 

'  The  health  of  Mrs  Inchbald,'  says  her  biographer, 
'  was  very  indifferent  this  year  (1819) ;  and  her  spirits 
sympathised  with  her  frame.  In  the  month  of 
March,  she  was  a  good  deal  disturbed  by  the  symp- 
toms of  a  complaint,  which  intermitted,  but  never 
entirely  left  her.  After  undressing  for  bed,  she  felt 
a  sensation  of  tightness  in  her  waist,  which  she 
naturally  enough  attributed  to  the  habit  of  draw- 
ing rather  too  closely  the  strings  of  her  under 
apparel.'  t 

And  after  her  death,  he  says :  '  As  we  cannot 
speak  professionally,  we  shall  only  say,  that  it  seems 
probable  the  tightness  of  which  she  formerly  com- 

*  Vol.  ii.  p.  260. 

t  P.  262. 


THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB          81 

plained  was  the  indication  of  that  malady  (internal 
inflammation)  which  did  not  quit  the  frame,  though 
it  remitted  its  attacks,  and,  latent,  awaited  only  the 
excitement  of  a  cold  to  render  her  recovery  imprac- 
ticable.' 

We  have  dwelt  a  little  on  this  point,  as  a  warn- 
ing ;  if  tight-lacers  can  take  warning.  We  almost 
fear  they  would  sooner  quote  Mrs  Inchbald  as  an 
excuse  than  an  admonition.  But,  at  all  events 
beauties  of  sixty-eight  may,  perhaps,  consent  to  be 
a  little  startled. 

If  this  was  a  weakness  in  Mrs  Inchbald,  let  tight- 
lacers  resemble  her  in  other  respects,  and  if  their 
rickety  children  can  forgive  them,  the  rest  of  the 
world  may  very  heartily  do  so.  Mrs  Inchbald  never 
had  any  children,  to  need  their  forgiveness.  She  was 
a  woman  of  rare  endowments  :  a  beauty,  a  dramatist, 
a  novelist,  a  successful  actress ;  yet  possessed  of 
virtue  so  rare,  that  she  would  practise  painful  self- 
denial  in  order  to  afford  deeds  of  charity.  Her 
acting  was,  perhaps,  of  the  sensible,  rather  than 
artistical  sort  ;  and  though  some  of  her  plays  and 
farces  have  still  their  seasons  of  re-appearance  on 
the  stage,  she  was  too  much  given  as  a  dramatist 
to  theatrical  and  sentimental  effects — too  melo- 
dramatic ;  but  her  novels  are  admirable,  particularly 
the  '  Simple  Story,'  which  has  all  the  elements  of 
duration — invention,  passion,  and  thorough  truth  to 

*  P.  275- 
F 


82 

nature  in  word  and  deed.  To  balance  the  advan- 
tages which  she  possessed  over  other  people,  she 
must  needs  have  had  some  faults  ;  and  we  take 
them  (besides  the  tight-lacing)  to  have  been  those 
of  temper  and  stubbornness.  Charles  Lamb  speaks 
of  her,  somewhere,  as  the  '  beautiful  vixen.'  The 
word  must  surely  have  been  too  strong  for  such 
a  woman  ;  who  is  said  to  have  possessed  both  the 
respect  and  affection  of  all  who  knew  her.  If  our 
memory  does  not  deceive  us,  he  applies  it  to  her 
upon  an  occasion  when  she  might  well  have  been 
angry,  and  when  she  thought  herself  bound  to  resort 
to  measures  of  self-defence,  physical  as  well  as  moral. 
A  distinguished  actor  who  was  enamoured  of  her, 
and  who  seems  to  have  been  a  warmer  lover  off 
the  stage  than  he  was  upon  it,  persisted  one  day 
in  forcing  upon  her  salutations  which  appeared  so 
alarming,  that  the  lady  seized  him  by  the  pigtail, 
and  tugged  it  with  a  vigour  so  efficacious,  as  forced 
him  to  desist  in  trepidation.  She  related  the  circum- 
stance to  a  friend,  adding,  with  a  touch  of  her  comic 
humour,  which  must  have  been  heightened  by  the 
difficulty  of  getting  out  the  words  (for  she  stammered 
sometimes),  '  How  lucky  that  he  did  not  w-w-wear 
a  w-w-w-wig ! ' 

Mrs  Inchbald  lived  in  several  other  houses  in 
Kensington,  which  shall  be  noticed  as  we  pass 
them ;  for  the  abodes  of  the  authoress  of  the 
'  Simple  Story '  make  classic  ground. 


CHAPTER  SEVEN 

WE  have  now  come  to  Kensington  High  Street, 
and  shall  take  our  way  on  the  left-hand  side  of 
it,  continuing  to  do  so  through  the  whole  town, 
and  noticing  the  streets  and  squares  that  branch 
out  of  it  as  we  proceed.  We  shall  then  turn  at 
the  end  of  the  town,  and  come  back  by  Holland 
House,  Campden  House,  and  Kensington  Palace 
and  Gardens. 

On   our  right  hand,  over  the  way,  is  the  Palace 
Gate  with  its  sentinels  ;  and  opposite  this  gate,  where 
we  are  halting,  is  a  sturdy,  good-sized  house,  a  sort 
83 


84         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

of  undergrown  mansion,  singularly  so  for  its  style 
of  building,  and  looking  as  if  it  must  have  been  the 
work  of  Vanbrugh,  one  of  whose  edifices  will  be 
noticed  further  on.  It  is  just  in  his  'no  nonsense' 
style ;  what  his  opponents  called  '  heavy ' ;  but  very 
sensible  and  to  the  purpose ;  built  for  duration.  It 
is  only  one  storey  high,  and  looks  as  if  it  had  been 
made  for  some  rich  old  bachelor,  who  chose  to  live 
alone,  but  liked  to  have  everything  about  him  strong 
and  safe. 

Such  was  probably  the  case,  for  it  is  called  Colby 
House,  after  a  baronet  of  that  name,  who  lived  in 
the  time  of  George  the  First,  and  who  appears  to 
have  been  a  man  of  humble  origin,  and  a  miser.  A 
spectator  of  the  house  might  imagine,  that  the 
architect  was  stopped,  when  about  to  commence 
a  third  storey,  in  order  to  save  the  expense.  Dr 
King,  the  Jacobite  divine,  who  knew  Colby,  and 
who  thinks  he  was  a  commissioner  in  the  Victual- 
ling Office,  says  (in  his  'Literary  and  Political 
Anecdotes  of  His  Own  Times ')  that  the  baronet 
killed  himself  by  rising  in  the  middle  of  the  night, 
when  he  was  in  a  profuse  perspiration  (the  con- 
sequence of  a  medicine  taken  to  that  effect),  and 
going  downstairs  for  the  key  of  the  cellar,  which 
he  had  inadvertently  left  on  the  table.  '  He  was 
apprehensive  that  his  servants  might  seize  the  key, 
and  rob  him  of  a  bottle  of  his  port  wine.' 

'  This  man,'  adds  the  Doctor, '  died  intestate,  and 


THE    OLD    COURT   SUBURB         85 

left  more  than  £200,000  in  the  funds,  which  was 
shared  among  five  or  six  day-labourers,  who  were 
his  nearest  relations.' 

'Who  sees  pale  Mammon  pine  amidst  his  store, 
Sees  but  a  backward  steward  for  the  poor.' 

The  High  Street  of  Kensington,  though  the  place 
is  so  near  London,  and  contains  so  many  new  build- 
ings, has  a  considerable  resemblance  to  that  of  a 
country  town.  This  is  owing  to  the  moderate  size 
of  the  houses,  to  their  general  style  of  building 
(which  is  that  of  a  century  or  two  ago),  and  to  the 
curious,  though  not  obvious,  fact,  that  not  one  of 
the  fronts  of  them  is  exactly  like  another.  It  is 
also  neat  and  clean ;  its  abutment  on  a  palace 
associates  it  with  something  of  an  air  of  refine- 
ment ;  and  the  first  object  that  presents  itself  to  the 
attention,  next  after  the  sentinels  at  the  Palace  Gate, 
is  a  white  and  pretty  lodge,  at  the  entrance  of  the 
new  road  leading  to  Bayswater.  The  lodge,  how- 
ever, is  somewhat  too  narrow.  The  road  is  called 
Kensington  Palace  Gardens,  and  is  gradually  filling 
with  mansions,  some  of  which  are  in  good  taste 
and  others  in  bad,  and  none  of  them  have  gardens, 
to  speak  of;  so  that  the  spectator  does  not  well 
see  why  anybody  should  live  there,  who  can  afford 
to  live  in  houses  so  large. 

Pleasant,  however,  as  the  aspect  of  High  Street  is 
on  first  entering  it,  the  eye  has  scarcely  caught  sight 


86         THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB 

of  the  lodge  just  mentioned,  when  it  encounters 
a  sore  in  the  shape  of  some  poor  Irish  people 
hanging  about,  at  the  corner  of  the  first  turning  on 
the  left  hand.  They  look  like  people  from  the 
old  broken  -  up  establishment  of  Saint  Giles's,  and 
probably  are  so ;  a  considerable  influx  from  the 
Rookery  in  that  quarter  having  augmented  the 
Rookery  in  this  ;  for  so  it  has  alike  been  called. 
This  Rookery  has  long  been  a  nuisance  in  Kensing- 
ton. In  the  morning  you  seldom  see  more  of  it 
than  this  indication  of  its  entrance ;  but  in  the 
evening,  the  inmates  mingle  with  the  rest  of  the 
inhabitants  out-of-doors,  and  the  naked  feet  of 
children,  and  the  ragged  and  dissolute  looks  of  men 
and  women,  present  a  painful  contrast  to  the  general 
decency.  We  understand,  however,  that  some  of 
these  poor  people  are  very  respectable  of  their  kind, 
and  that  the  improvements  which  are  taking  place 
in  other  portions  of  the  kingdom,  in  consequence 
of  the  attention  so  nobly  paid  of  late  years  to  the 
destitute  and  uneducated,  have  not  been  without 
effect  in  this  quarter.  The  men  for  the  most  part 
are,  or  profess  to  be,  labouring  bricklayers,  and  the 
women,  market-garden  women.  They  are  calculated, 
at  a  rough  guess,  to  amount  to  a  thousand  ;  all 
crammed,  perhaps,  into  a  place  which  ought  not 
to  contain  above  a  hundred.  The  reader,  from  late 
and  painful  statements  on  these  subjects,  knows  how 
they  must  dwell.  The  place  is  not  much  in  sight. 


S     <f 


THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB          87 

You  give  a  glance,  and  a  guess  at  it,  as  you  look 
down  the  turning,  and  so  pass  on.  There  was  a 
talk,  not  long  since,  of  bringing  the  new  road  just 
mentioned,  from  over  the  way,  and  continuing  it 
through  the  spot,  so  as  to  sweep  it  clean  of  the 
infection,  as  in  the  case  of  New  Holborn  and  St 
Giles's ;  and  in  all  probability  the  improvement 
will  take  place  ;  for  one  advance  brings  another, 
and  Kensington  has  become  of  late  so  much  hand- 
somer as  well  as  larger,  that  it  will  hardly  leave  this 
ugly  blemish  on  its  beauty.  But  leases  must  expire, 
and  lettings  and  sub-lettings  for  poor  people  die 
hard. 

Most  of  this  unhappy  multitude  are  Roman 
Catholics.  Their  priests  tell  us  of  a  fine  house  at 
Loretto  in  Italy,  which  the  Virgin  Mary  lived  in 
at  Nazareth,  and  which  angels  brought  from  that 
place  into  the  dominions  of  the  Pope.  They  also 
tell  us,  that  miracles  never  cease ;  at  least,  not  in 
Roman  Catholic  hands ;  and  that  nobody  feels  for 
the  poor  as  they  do.  What  a  pity  that  they  could 
not  join  these  feelings,  these  hands,  and  these 
miracles,  and  pray  a  set  of  new  houses  into 
England  for  the  poor  bricklayers ! 

Continuing  our  way  from  this  inauspicious  corner, 
we  come  to  the  turning  at  Young  Street,  which  leads 
into  Kensington  Square,  formerly  as  important  a 
place  in  this  suburb,  as  Grosvenor  Square  was  in 
the  metropolis. 


88          THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

Kensington  Square  occupies  an  area  of  some 
hundred  and  fifty  feet,  and  was  commenced  in  the 
reign  of  James  the  Second,  and  finished  towards 
the  close  of  that  of  William.  It  is  now  a  place 
of  obsolete-looking,  though  respectable  houses,  such 
as  seem  made  to  become  boarding-schools,  which 
some  of  them  are ;  and  you  cannot  help  thinking 
it  has  a  desolate  air,  though  all  its  houses  are 
inhabited.  In  the  reigns  of  William,  and  Anne, 
and  the  first  two  Georges,  Kensington  Square  was 
the  most  fashionable  spot  in  the  suburbs ;  it  was 
filled  with  frequenters  of  the  Court,  and  these  are 
the  identical  homes  which  they  inhabited.  Faulkner 
says,  that  'at  one  time,  upwards  of  forty  carriages 
were  kept  in  and  about  the  neighbourhood ' ;  and 
that,  '  in  the  time  of  George  the  Second,  the  demand 
for  lodgings  was  so  great,  that  an  ambassador,  a 
bishop,  and  a  physician  were  known  to  occupy 
apartments  in  the  same  house.' 

The  earliest  distinguished  name  of  an  inhabitant 
of  this  spot,  in  the  parish-books,  is  that  of  the 
Duchess  of  Mazarin,  in  the  year  1692.  We  know 
not  which  house  she  lived  in  ;  but  the  reader  must 
imagine  her,  after  the  good  French  fashion,  taking 
her  evening  walk  in  the  Square,  the  envy  of  sur- 
rounding petticoats,  accompanied  by  a  set  of 
English  and  French  gallants,  Villierses,  Godolphins, 
Ruvignys,  etc.,  among  whom  is  her  daily  visitor, 
and  constant,  adoring  old  friend,  Saint  Evremond, 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB          89 

with  his  white  locks,  little  skull  cap,  and  the  great 
wen  on  his  forehead.  He  idolises  her  to  the  very 
tips  of  her  fingers,  though  she  borrowed  his  money, 
which  he  could  ill  afford — and  gambled  it  away 
besides,  which  he  could  not  but  pray  her  not  to 
do.  He  also  begged  her  to  resist  the  approaches 
of  usquebaugh. 

The  Duchess  was  then  six-and-forty,  an  Italian, 
with  black  hair,  and,  according  to  his  description 
of  her,  still  a  perfect  beauty.  Fielding  thought 
her  so  when  she  was  younger,  for  he  likens  Sophia 
Western  to  her  portrait. 

Hortensia  Mancini  was  niece  of  Cardinal  Mazarin, 
at  whose  death  (to  use  her  own  words,  in  the 
1  Memoirs '  which  she  dictated  to  Saint  Real)  she 
became  'the  richest  heiress,  and  the  unhappiest 
woman,  in  Christendom ' ;  that  is  to  say,  she  found 
she  had  got  a  jealous,  mean  bigot  for  her  husband, 
who  grudged  her  a  handsome  participation  of  the 
money  which  he  obtained  with  her.  And  as  this 
was  touching  her  on  the  tenderest  point,  she  ran 
away  from  him  in  pure  desperation,  to  see  how  she 
could  enjoy  herself  elsewhere,  and  what  funds  to 
pay  for  it  she  could  get  out  of  him,  by  disclosing 
their  quarrels  to  the  world.  The  Duke  (his  name 
was  Meilleraye,  but  he  took  the  name  of  Mazarin 
when  he  married  her)  was  inexorable,  and  not  to 
be  scandalised  out  of  his  meanness ;  so  his  wife, 
after  divers  wanderings,  which  got  her  scandalised 


90         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

in  her  turn,  came  into  England  on  pretence  of 
visiting  her  cousin  Mary  of  Este,  Duchess  of  York ; 
but,  in  reality,  to  get  a  pension  from  Charles  the 
Second.  This  she  did,  to  the  amount  of  four 
thousand  a  year,  every  penny  of  which  was  prob- 
ably grudged  by  the  lavish  king  himself,  who  could 
not  afford  it,  and  who  is  said  to  have  been  dis- 
gusted by  her  falling  in  love  with  another  man 
the  moment  she  got  it.  Charles,  when  in  exile, 
had  sued  for  Hortensia's  hand  in  vain,  from  her 
uncle  the  Cardinal,  who  thought  the  royal  prospects 
hopeless,  and  who  was  in  fear  of  the  Protector. 
Madame  de  Mazarin,  however,  continued  to  flourish 
among  the  ladies  at  Whitehall,  during  Charles's 
reign ;  she  had  half  her  pension  confirmed  to  her 
by  King  William  ;  did  nothing,  from  first  to  last, 
but  keep  company,  and  gamble  it  away ;  and  six 
years  after  her  residence  at  Kensington,  died  so 
poor,  at  a  small  house  in  Chelsea  (the  last,  as  you 
go  from  London,  in  Paradise  Row),  that  her  body 
was  detained  by  her  creditors  till  her  husband 
redeemed  it.  The  husband  embalmed  it ;  and, 
surviving  her  many  years,  is  said  (which  is  hardly 
credible)  to  have  carried  it  about  with  him  all  that 
time,  wherever  he  went,  as  if  determined  on  having 
the  woman  with  him  dead,  who  could  not  'abide' 
him  while  she  was  living. 

Madame  de  Mazarin  has  been  so  praised  by  Saint 
Evremond    for   every  kind  of  good   quality  except 


THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB 


91 


prudence  in  money  matters,  and  occasional  fits  of 
ill-humour,  that,  with  all  due  allowance  for  the 
dotages  to  which  old  men  are  subject,  and  for  his 
particular  delight,  as  a  French  exile,  in  finding  at 


her  house  a  female  friend,  and  a  society  with  whom 
he  could  spend  his  evenings,  it  is  not  easy  to  coincide 
with  the  general  opinion,  which  sets  her  down  as  a 
woman  destitute  of  everything  attractive,  except  her 
beauty.  She  probably  understood  his  wit,  and 
enjoyed  it  to  his  heart's  content ;  for  she  appears 


92          THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

to  have  had  taste  and  reflection  enough  to  hold  no 
mean  part  in  conversation  ;  and  this  would  hinder 
her  from  falling  into  the  common  mistake  of  beauties, 
and  thinking  she  could  dispense  with  the  wish  to 
please.  She  used  to  intimate  that  her  friends  would 
regret  her  when  she  was  gone ;  and  St  Evremond 
appears  heartily  to  have  done  so,  though  she 
borrowed  hundreds  out  of  his  savings,  and  kept  him 
in  constant  fright  with  her  losses.  The  Duchess 
had  been  a  spoilt  child,  and  her  hand  was  bestowed 
on  a  foolish  man.  When  she  was  a  girl,  she  tells 
us  that  she  and  her  sisters  one  day  threw  upwards 
of  three  hundred  louis  out  of  window,  for  the 
pleasure  of  seeing  a  parcel  of  footmen  scramble 
and  fight  for  them.  They  must  have  been  louis 
d'ors,  or  so  many  pounds  sterling,  a  sum  worth 
two  or  three  times  the  amount  at  present ;  she  says, 
that  the  amusement  was  thought  to  have  hastened 
her  uncle's  death.  She  was  afterwards  accused, 
while  in  a  convent,  where  her  husband  had  suc- 
ceeded in  '  stowing '  her  for  a  time,  of  putting  ink 
into  the  holy-water  box  (to  smut  the  nuns'  faces), 
and  of  frightening  them  out  of  their  sleep  at  night, 
by  running  through  the  dormitory  with  a  parcel 
of  little  dogs,  yelping  and  howling.  She  says  that 
these  stories  were  either  inventions  or  exaggera- 
tions ;  but  we  are  strongly  disposed  to  believe 
them.  We  mention  the  convent,  because  as  such 
places  are  again  subjects  of  conversation  in  this 


THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB         93 

country,  and  matters  of  concern  to  our  families, 
it  may  be  useful  to  know  what  kind  of  scenes  they 
have  witnessed,  comic  as  well  as  tragic. 

But  we  must  quit  this  glimpse  of  the  days  of 
Charles  the  Second,  for  a  personage  who  suggests 
a  wholly  different  set  of  ideas,  his  figure  having 
been  unwieldy,  and  his  dulness  unfortunately  no  less 
conspicuous  than  his  good  morals.  Here,  somewhere 
about  the  south-west  corner  of  the  Square,  lived, 
for  several  years,  physician  to  King  William  the 
Third,  and  butt  of  all  the  wits  of  the  time,  Sir 
Richard  Blackmore.  Johnson  said  they  hated  him 
more  for  his  morals  than  his  dulness ;  but  though 
most  of  them  were  far  from  being  immaculate,  it 
was  not  in  the  nature  of  any  of  them  to  hate  a  man 
for  what  was  good  in  him,  much  less  of  such  persons 
as  Garth  and  Steele.  The  truth  is,  that  Blackmore 
began  the  warfare  by  attacking  the  wits ;  and  as 
he  wrote  heaps  of  dull  poetry,  it  was  not  to  be 
expected  that  they  should  spare  their  assailant 
merely  because  his  clumsy  blows  were  dealt  as 
heavily  as  he  could  bestow  them,  out  of  a  good 
motive.  They  might  even  doubt  the  entire  good- 
ness of  motive  in  a  man  who  understood  his 
qualifications  in  other  respects  so  ill ;  and,  indeed, 
there  seems  to  have  been  nothing  to  show  for  the 
motive,  except  the  blows ;  for  though  Blackmore 
was,  in  all  probability,  what  is  called  a  respectable 
man,  there  is  no  evidence  of  his  having  possessed 


94         THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

more  than  the  average  amount  of  virtue,  or  any 
such  particular  experience  or  self-  knowledge,  as 
might  supply  the  place  of  excellence.  Some  of  the 
wits,  too,  who  advocated  a  milder  form  of  Christianity 
than  he  did,  might  have  doubted  the  very  piety  of 
some  of  his  dogmas,  and  thus  have  been  induced  to 
treat  his  arrogation  of  a  right  to  lecture  them  with 
double  contempt ;  and  none  of  them,  as  critics,  were 
bound  to  overlook  the  presumption  of  a  poetaster,  who 
made  no  scruple  to  denounce  folly  and  ignorance  in 
others,  and  to  trumpet  forth  his  own  claims  as  a 
censor  and  a  man  of  genius.  The  '  Creation '  is  a 
favourable  specimen  of  Blackmore.  There  is  a 
horrible  facility  of  mediocrity  about  it.  But  of  his 
works  in  general  that  condemned  him,  who  now 
shall  judge?  for  who  possesses  them?  Let  the 
reader  take  a  couplet  from  the  lines  quoted  by 
Garth  in  his  '  Dispensary.' 

'Naked  and  half-burnt  hills,  with  hideous  wrack, 
Affright  the  sky,  and  fry  the  ocean's  back.1 

Imagine   the   following  tomes,  written  by  such   a 
pen  : 

1  Creation/  a  philosophical  poem,  in  seven  books. 

'  The  Redeemer,'  a  poem,  in  six  books. 

'  Eliza,'  a  poem,  in  ten  books. 

'  Prince  Arthur,'  an  heroic  poem,  in  ten  books. 

'  King  Arthur,'  an  heroic  poem,  in  ten  books. 

'  King  Alfred,'  a  poem,  in  twelve  books. 


tnuw/  >ma< 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB         95 

And  to  stay  his  stomach  between  whiles,  besides 
a  number  of  medical  and  theological  treatises,  he 
versifies  the  whole  body  of  Psalms,  and  makes  a 
paraphrase  of  the  '  Book  of  Job,'  by  way  of  extend- 
ing the  lesson  on  patience.  To  talk  of  morality  and 
good  intentions,  as  things  that  should  have  saved 
such  '  a  long-winded  lubber '  from  the  retorts  of  the 
wits,  was  as  idle  as  it  would  be  to  talk  of  the 
morality  of  a  concert  of  frogs,  or  the  good  intentions 
of  the  drone  of  a  Lincolnshire  bag-pipe.  Blackmore 
was  a  man  who  could  not  allow  for  margin,  yet 
nobody  made  greater  demands  upon  it. 

Let  us  turn  to  a  good  old  prelate,  Hough,  Bishop 
of  Winchester,  who  lived  in  this  square  several  years, 
and  whom  we  mention  for  three  reasons :  first,  be- 
cause, when  elected  President  of  Magdalen  College, 
Oxford,  he  had  resisted,  with  equal  temper  and 
firmness,  the  arbitrary  conduct  of  James  the  Second, 
in  forcing  a  Roman  Catholic  into  his  place  ;  second, 
because  he  lived  to  reach  his  ninety-third  year,  which 
we  take  to  be  a  merit  in  a  bishop,  considering  the 
table  he  is  expected  to  keep,  and  the  plethora  which 
is  pardoned  to  episcopal  virtues ;  and  third,  because 
the  habitual  sweetness  of  his  disposition  (and  we 
consider  the  least  proof  of  such  a  habit  to  be  no 
anti-climax  in  this  enumeration)  enabled  him  to  give 
dignity  to  a  pun. 

A  young  clergyman,  curate  of  a  neighbouring 
parish,  says  his  biographer,  Mr  Wilmot,  taking  leave 


96         THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

of  him  one  day,  and  making  many  awkward  bows, 
ran  against,  and  threw  down  on  the  floor,  a  favourite 
barometer  of  the  Bishop's.  The  man  was  frightened, 
and  extremely  concerned ;  but  the  good  old  prelate, 
with  all  the  complacency  possible,  said  to  him,  '  Don't 
be  uneasy,  Sir.  I  have  observed  this  glass  almost 
daily  for  upwards  of  seventy  years,  but  I  never  saw 
it  so  low  before.' 

It  may  seem,  on  reading  this  anecdote,  that,  to 
render  the  Bishop's  behaviour  perfect,  the  mention 
of  the  seventy  years  might  have  been  spared  ;  but  in 
so  excellent  a  man  we  must  look  upon  it  as  a  piece 
of  refined  delicacy,  enhancing  the  kindly  nonchalance 
of  the  conclusion. 

Two  other  prelates  are  mentioned  as  having  lived 
in  Kensington  Square,  and  all  three  are  worth  record- 
ing. The  first  was  Mawson,  Bishop  of  Ely,  'awk- 
ward and  absent,'  and  with  'no  desire  to  please,' 
says  an  equivocal  panegyrist;  meaning,  in  modern 
parlance,  no  desire  to  curry  favour  ;  but  a  man  of 
princely  munificence.  He  was  the  son  of  a  brewer 
at  Chiswick ;  founder,  we  hope,  of  that  orthodox 
drink  the  '  fine  Chiswick  ale.'  Mawson  did  not  live 
so  long  as  Hough,  but  he  attained  a  very  respectable 
longevity.  He  died  in  the  year  1770,  at  the  age  of 
eighty-eight.  Perhaps  the  Kensington  air  was  of 
use  to  the  good  bishops. 

The  other  prelate  was  Herring,  Bishop  of  Bangor, 
afterwards  Primate,  and  author  of  some  of  the  best 


THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB 


97 


letters  in  the  'Elegant  Epistles.'  He  occupied  the 
house  at  the  south-east  corner  of  the  Square  ;  but  he 
died  at  Croydon,  in  1757.  Herring  made  a  mistake, 
when  he  attacked  the  Beggars'  Opera ;  for  which 
Swift  gave  him  a  tremendous  rebuke.  He  had  better 
have  attacked  the  morals  of  the  great  world,  of  which 
the  Opera  was  a  parody.  But  he  probably  outlived 
the  misconception ;  for  he  was  a  man  of  a  genial 
nature,  and  had  a  true  taste  in  literature.  It  is 
curious,  however,  to  see  on  which  side  of  the  ques- 
tion lay  worldly  prosperity.  Gay,  who  attacked  the 
morals  of  the  great,  and  Swift,  who  defended  the 
attack,  missed  the  preferments  they  looked  for  ;  while 
Herring,  who  may  have  been  thought  to  defend  the 
morals,  became  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 

Herring  seemed  born  to  be  an  Archbishop.  He 
was  grave  yet  insinua- 
ting, had  a  sweet  voice  and 
a  majestic  appearance  ;  '  a 
countenance  (as  Sydney 
Smith  says)  expressive  of 
all  the  cardinal  virtues 
and  the  Ten  Command- 
ments.' Strange  are  the 
vicissitudes  of  houses.  In 
this  same  abode  of  the 
magnificent  -  looking  pre- 
late, lived,  some  fifty  years 
afterwards,  a  man  with  a 
G 


98          THE    OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

club-foot,  who  had  also  been  a  prelate,  but  had 
unfrocked  himself  to  become  a  statesman,  and 
who,  instead  of  embodying  '  all  the  cardinal  virtues 
and  the  Ten  Commandments,'  was  thought  by  most 
people  to  have  violated  every  injunction  in  the 
Decalogue.  This  was  Talleyrand,  a  diplomatist 
under  every  Government  in  France,  from  the 
beginning  of  the  Revolution  to  that  of  Louis 
Philippe  inclusive,  with  the  exception  of  the 
Reign  of  Terror.  We  believe  him,  nevertheless,  to 
have  been  a  very  calumniated  person.  That  he 
had  led  the  ordinary  life  of  a  young  French  noble, 
under  the  old  rtgime,  is  very  likely ;  and  that  he 
had  no  taste  for  being  a  martyr,  is  equally  so.  It 
is  easy  also  to  palm  upon  a  wit  and  a  man  of  the 
world  every  clever  saying  that  seems  to  tell  against 
political  honesty.  But,  for  the  most  part,  Talley- 
rand did  good  to  the  world  under  his  different 
masters ;  hindered  them  from  being  worse ;  and 
was  for  promoting  constitutional  government.  He 
lost  Napoleon's  favour  by  his  tendencies  that  way, 
and  by  his  protest  against  the  iniquitous  seizure  of 
Spain.  The  Emperor's  decline  dates  from  the  period 
of  his  differences  with  Talleyrand.  While  yet  a 
bishop,  Talleyrand  advocated  the  rights  of  the  work- 
ing clergy ;  and  he  appears  to  have  been  a  man  of 
amiable  private  intercourse.  Let  justice  be  done 
to  the  club-foot  that  made  the  best,  instead  of  the 
worst  of  things  ;  not  always  the  way  with  injured 


THE    OLD    COURT   SUBURB 


99 


members  of  society.  Perhaps  it  will  not  be  thought 
an  anti-climax  in  this  commercial  country — indeed 
it  is  a  good  ground  of  eulogium  anywhere — if  we 
finish  this  tribute  to  his  memory,  by  quoting  what 
is  said  of  him  during  his  residence  in  this  Square, 
by  the  Kensington  historian ;  to  wit,  that  '  his 
character  was  marked  by  urbanity  of  manners,  and 
by  strict  punctuality  in  his  payments.' 


4 


i'   -: 

.%» 


.1, 


CHAPTER 
EIGHT 


RETURNING  out  of  Kensington  Square  by  the  way 
we  entered  it,  we  come,  in  the  most  open  part  of 
the  High  Street,  to  the  parish  church  and  church- 
yard ;  the  former,  a  small  and  homely  building  for 
so  distinguished  a  suburb ;  the  latter  suggesting  a 
doubt,  whether  a  burial-ground  ought  to  abut  so 
closely  on  a  public  way. 

In   some   moods   of  the   mind,   the  juxtaposition 
is  very  painful.     It  looks  as  if  death  itself  were  no 


100 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB   101 

escape  from  the  turmoils  of  life.  We  feel  as  if  the 
noise  of  carts  and  cries  were  never  to  be  out  of 
one's  hearing  ;  as  if  the  tears,  however  hidden,  of 
those  who  stood  mournfully  looking  at  our  graves, 
were  to  be  mocked  by  the  passing  crowd  of  in- 
different spectators  ;  as  if  the  dead  might  be  sensible 
of  the  very  market  going  on,  with  all  its  night-lights 
and  bustle  (as  it  does  here  on  Saturdays),  and  of 
the  noise  of  drunken  husbands  and  wives,  persisting 
in  bringing  a  sense  of  misery  into  one's  last  home. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  sociable  man  may  some- 
times be  disposed  to  regard  with  complacency  this 
kind  of  posthumous  intercourse  with  the  living.  He 
may  feel  as  if  the  dead  were  hardly  the  departed — 
as  if  they  were  still  abiding  among  their  friends  and 
fellow-creatures,  not  displeased  even  to  hear  the  noise 
and  the  bustle  ;  or,  at  least,  as  if  in  ceasing  to  hear 
our  voices  they  were  still,  so  to  speak,  reposing  in 
our  arms.  Morning,  somehow,  in  this  view  of  the 
case,  would  seem  to  be  still  theirs,  though  they 
choose  to  lie  in  bed  ;  cheerful  noon  is  with  them, 
without  their  having  any  of  the  trouble  of  it.  The 
names  may  be  read  on  their  tombstones  as  familiarly 
as  they  used  to  be  on  their  doors ;  children  play 
about  their  graves,  unthinkingly  indeed,  but  joyously, 
and  with  as  little  thought  of  irreverence  as  butterflies  ; 
and  the  good  fellow  going  home  at  night  from  his 
party,  breathes  a  jovial,  instead  of  a  mournful,  bless- 
ing on  their  memories.  Perhaps  he  knew  them. 


io2   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

Perhaps  he  has  been  joining  in  one  of  their  old 
favourite  glees  by  Callcott  or  Spofforth,  the  former 
of  whom  was  a  Kensington  man,  and  the  latter  of 
whom  lies  buried  here,  and  is  recorded  at  the  church 
door.  And  assuredly  the  dead  Spofforth  would  find 
no  fault  with  his  living  remembrancer. 

In  quiet  country  places  there  is,  in  fact,  a  sort  of 
compromise  in  this  instance  between  the  two  feelings 
of  privacy  and  publicity,  which  we  have  often  thought 
very  pleasing.  The  dead  in  a  small,  sequestered 
village,  seem  hardly  removed  from  their  own  houses. 
The  last  home  seems  almost  a  portion  of  the  first. 
The  clergyman's  house  often  has  the  churchyard 
as  close  to  it  as  the  garden  ;  and  when  he  goes  into 
his  grave,  he  seems  but  removed  into  another  room  ; 
gone  to  bed,  and  to  his  sleep.  He  has  not  'left.' 
He  lies  there  with  his  family,  still  ready  to  waken 
with  them  all,  on  the  heavenly  morning. 

This,  however,  is  a  feeling  upon  the  matter,  which 
we  find  it  difficult  to  realise  in  a  bustling  town.  We 
are  there  convinced  upon  the  whole,  that,  whether 
near  to  houses  or  away  from  them,  the  sense  of 
quiet  is  requisite  to  the  proper  idea  of  the  church- 
yard. The  dead  being  actually  severed  from  us, 
no  longer  having  voices,  all  sights  and  sounds,  but 
of  the  gentlest  and  quietest  kind,  seem  to  be  im- 
pertinences towards  them  ;  not  to  belong  to  them. 
Quiet,  being  the  thing  farthest  removed  from  cities, 
and  what  we  imagine  to  pervade  all  space,  and  the 


THE    OLD   COURT  SUBURB       103 

gulfs  between  the  stars,  is  requisite  to  make  us  feel 
that  we  are  standing  on  the  threshold  of  heaven. 

Upon  the  whole,  therefore,  we  cannot  approve  of 
churchyards  in  living  thoroughfares,  and  thus  must 
needs  object  to  the  one  in  the  place  before  us ; 
though  there  are  portions  of  it  to  the  north  and 
west  of  the  church  more  sequestered  (for  a  small 
remove  in  these  cases  makes  a  great  difference) ; 
and  in  those  portions  the  most  noticeable  of  the 
graves  are  situate.  They  are  not  many ;  nor  have 
we  much  to  say  of  persons  lying  in  the  church 
itself,  or  in  the  church  vaults.  What  notices 
we  have  to  give,  whether  in  church  or  church- 
yard, we  shall  put  in  chronological  order,  as  not 
only  being  most  convenient,  but  having  a  certain 
mortal  propriety. 

But  first  we  must  return  to  the  church  itself. 
From  what  we  have  said  of  it,  the  reader  will 
conclude  that  it  is  remarkable,  as  an  edifice,  for 
nothing  but  the  smallness  and  homeliness  of  its 
appearance ;  but  it  has  this  curious  additional  claim 
to  consideration ;  namely,  that  what  with  partial 
rebuildings,  and  wholesale  repairs,  it  has  been 
altered,  since  the  year  1683,  nearly  a  dozen  times. 
How  often  before  then,  we  cannot  say ;  nor  do  we 
know  when  it  was  first  built.  But  the  alterations, 
for  the  most  part,  appear  to  have  been  as  bad  as 
what  they  altered.  They  beat  the  silk  stocking, 
the  repeated  mendings  of  which  turned  it  into 


io4   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

worsted.  They  were  always  worsted,  badly  darned. 
They  resembled  the  scapegrace  relation  of  the 
famous  Penn,  whom  his  punning  recorder  described 
as  a  pen  that  had  been  '  often  cut,  but  never 
mended.'  What  were  improvements  or  require- 
ments in  some  respects,  became  defacements  in 
others,  or  things  to  be  wished  away.  The  painted 
window  was  meagre  ;  the  galleries  clogged  up  a 
space  already  too  little,  and  looked  as  if  they 
would  slide  into  the  pews  ;  the  pews  themselves 
were  too  tall,  and  aggravated  that  sense  of 
closeness  and  crowding,  to  which  the  increasing 
population  naturally  tended,  and  which  is  still  the 
first  thing  that  strikes  a  visitor  of  the  church. 

While  writing  this  passage,  however  (for  the 
church  is  now  undergoing  another  repair),  we  have 
the  pleasure  of  observing  that  the  pews  are  in  the 
act  of  being  made  lower  ;  and  we  hail  this  undoubted 
improvement,  as  an  evidence  of  the  better  taste 
which  new  authorities  have  brought  even  into 
Kensington  parish  church,  and  which,  indeed,  was 
to  be  expected,  from  what  they  have  done  in  other 
respects.  We  must  add,  that  its  psalmody  appears 
to  have  been  for  some  time  past  superior  to  that 
of  most  churches,  owing,  it  would  seem,  to  the 
accomplished  family  of  the  Callcotts,  who  have 
long  been  residents  of  the  parish,  and  one  of  whom, 
no  great  while  ago,  was  organist.  Nor  should  the 
writer  omit,  that  the  parish  authorities,  both 


THE    OLD    COURT   SUBURB       105 

clerical  and  laical,  and  their  servants  also,  do 
justice  to  the  example  at  their  head,  and  are  as 
courteous  as  becomes  their  position. 

Here,  in  church  or  churchyard,  among  other  less 
noticeable  persons,  have  been  buried — 

Imprimis,  in  the  year  1510,  Philip  Meautis,  son 
and  heir  of  John  Meautis ;  which  said  John  Meautis, 
described  in  a  pardon  granted  by  Edward  the  Fifth, 
as  '  John  Meautis  of  our  town  of  Calais,  clerk,  other- 
wise called  John  de  Meautis,  lately  of  London, 
gentleman,  otherwise  called  John  de  Meautis,  lately 
of  Kensington,  in  the  county  of  Middlesex,  gentle- 
man, otherwise  called  John  de  Meutice,  of  the  town 
of  Westminster,  in  the  county  of  Middlesex,  yeoman, 
or  under  whatever  name  he  may  be  registered/  is 
forgiven  and  absolved  from  all  outlawry  and  all 
other  consequences  of  neglects,  contempts,  conceal- 
ments, conspiracies,  extortions,  murders  (niurdra  /), 
and  whatsoever  other  felonies  and  enormities  he 
may  have  been  guilty  of.  Probably  it  was  a 
pardon  from  Richard,  the  poor  little  king's  uncle, 
on  the  understanding  that  an  enemy  of  the  House 
of  York  was  to  become  a  friend  ;  an  expectation 
which  did  not  hinder  John  Meautis,  or  his  son  Philip 
(we  know  not  which)  from  becoming  secretary  to 
Kings  Henry  the  Seventh  and  Eighth.  We  notice 
the  name  for  two  other  reasons ;  first,  because  it 
was  that  of  Bacon's  faithful  secretary,  Sir  Thomas 
Meautis,  who  raised  the  characteristic  statue  to  the 


io6   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

philosopher,  which  sits  thinking  on  his  monument 
at  St  Albans ;  second,  to  observe,  that  the  alias 
Meautis,  or  Meutice  (the  name  being  obviously  of 
French  origin),  renders  it  probable  that  there  is 
more  propriety  in  the  vulgar  pronunciation  of 
Bewfort  for  Beaufort,  than  might  otherwise  be 
supposed,  especially  as  we  retain  it  in  the  word 
beauty,  the  English  of  beaute.  There  is  reason  to 
believe  that  it  was  the  real  old  French  pronunciation. 
We  have  read  in  some  book,  but  forget  where,  that 
the  existing  mode  of  speaking  French,  which  has 
so  frittered  and  clipped  it,  and  rendered  its 
prosody  such  a  puzzle  to  English  readers,  is  not 
older  than  the  time  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth. 

The  next  distinguished  burial  we  meet  with,  is 
that  of  one  Sir  Manhood  Penruddock,  a  gentleman 
whose  peremptory  baptismal  name,  joined  to  his 
chivalrous  rank,  and  to  the  nature  of  his  death, 
appears  to  insist  on  attention  to  his  memory,  upon 
pain  of  a  challenge  from  his  ghost.  He  was  'slain 
at  Netting  Wood  (saith  the  parish  register)  in  fight ' ; 
that  is  to  say,  we  take  it,  in  a  duel ;  for  the  '  fight ' 
was  in  the  year  1608,  during  the  pacific  times  of 
King  James  the  First.  Sir  Manhood  was  most 
likely  some  hot-headed  Welshman,  the  son  of  a  corre- 
sponding father,  who  had  thus  christened  him,  by 
way  of  injunction  to  uphold  the  fame  of  his  ancestors. 

From  Sir  Manhood,  we  are  borne  over  a  con- 
siderable interval  of  time,  and  brought  to  Addison's 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB   107 

Earl  of  Warwick,  who  died  in  the  year  1721,  at 
the  age  of  four-and-twenty.  He  was  son  of  the 
Countess  whom  Addison  married,  and  was  the 
youth  to  whom  the  moralist  is  said  to  have 
addressed  the  famous  words,  '  See  how  a  Christian 
can  die.'  A  statue  of  him,  in  marble,  and  in  good 
condition,  is  still  remaining  in  the  church,  on  the 
right-hand  side  of  the  principal  entrance  from  the 
street.  It  sits  under  an  epitaph,  leaning  on  an 
urn  ;  and  has  an  aspect,  which,  at  first  sight,  you 
hardly  know  whether  to  be  male  or  female.  This 
is  owing,  partly  to  the  delicate  smooth  face  and 
flowing  hair,  and  partly  to  the  robe,  which  has 
something  of  the  look  of  a  lady's  gown.  On  turn- 
ing to  the  legs,  and  finding  them  in  ancient  sandals, 
you  discover  that  the  gown  is  a  Roman  toga. 
Either  the  face  is  unlike,  or  the  compliment  to  its 
manliness  (strangely  paid  in  the  first  person — virile 
nescio  quid)  is  clearly  undeserved.  The  whole 
epitaph,  indeed,  is  contradictory  to  the  tradition 
handed  down  respecting  the  rakery  of  this  young 
nobleman  ;  probably  on  no  better  foundation  than 
Addison's  dying  words,  which  have  been  supposed 
to  imply  some  special  moral  necessity  for  them, 
on  the  part  of  his  hearer.  Writers  complimented 
the  Earl  on  his  virtues,  while  he  was  living ;  and 
Addison,  in  some  pleasant  letters  to  him,  on  the 
subject  of  birds,  speaks  of  his  '  more  severe  studies,' 
and  of  their  common  friend,  Virgil.  The  proba- 


io8   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

bility  is,  that  he  was  of  a  delicate  constitution,  and 
of  a  lively  enough  mind,  and  that  his  attention 
had  been  drawn  to  the  writings  of  Shaftesbury 
and  others,  with  a  vivacity  which  Addison  thought 
fit  to  repress. 

Francis  Colman,  in  1733.  Father  and  grandfather 
of  the  two  George  Colmans,  the  dramatists,  both 
buried  here  also.  He  was  sometime  British  Minister 
at  the  Court  of  Tuscany.  The  dramatic  propensity 
of  the  family  appears  to  have  commenced  with  this 
gentleman,  who  interested  himself  in  operatic  affairs, 
and  wrote  the  words  of  Handel's '  Ariadne  in  Naxos.' 
He  was  an  intimate  friend  of  Gay. 

Dr  John  Jortin,  in  the  year  1770,  aged  seventy- 
one.  Author  of  the  '  Life  of  Erasmus  ' ;  an  elegant 
scholar,  critic,  and  theologian.  He  lies  in  the  church- 
yard, under  a  flat  stone,  which  is  surrounded  with 
iron  rails,  and  briefly  inscribed  with  his  name,  age, 
and  the  day  on  which  he  '  ceased  to  be  mortal ' 
(mortalis  esse  destif).  Among  the  improvements 
which  the  authorities  here  are  making,  we  trust  we 
shall  see  these  good  words  rescued  from  the  dirt 
which  has  obscured  them. 

There  were  some  curious  inconsistencies  in  Jortin. 
He  was  a  good  -  natured  man,  with  unattractive 
manners ;  was  a  writer  of  elegant  sermons,  which 
he  read  very  badly ;  and  was  always  intimating 
that  he  ought  to  have  had  greater  preferment  in 
the  church  ;  though  he  was  suspected,  not  unreason- 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    109 

ably,  of  differing  with  it  on  some  points  held 
essential  to  orthodoxy.  His  Life  was  written  by 
Dr  Disney  the  Unitarian.  The  Doctor's  book  ought 
to  have  been  more  amusing,  considering  that  Jortin 
had  the  reputation  of  being  a  wit.  To  the  best  of 
our  recollection,  it  contains  but  one  solitary  jest, 
and  that  more  pleasant  than  exquisite.  Jortin,  when 
summoned  to  make  his  appearance  in  some  public 
room,  before  the  bishop  who  gave  him  his  vicarage, 
could  not  find  his  hat.  On  returning  to  his  friends, 
he  said,  '  I  have  lost  my  hat,  but  got  a  living.' 

Mr  Thomas  Wright,  1776.  One  of  those  didactic 
gentlemen,  who  cannot  leave  off  the  habit  of  fault- 
finding, even  in  their  graves,  but  must  needs  lecture 
and  snub  the  readers  of  their  tombstones.  This 
posthumous  busybody,  who  informs  us  that  his 
own  head  is  quiet,  seems  determined  that  the  case 
shall  be  different  with  ours.  The  following  is  his 
epitaph  in  the  churchyard : — 

'  Farewell,  vain  world  !  I've  had  enough  of  thee  ; 
I  value  not  what  thou  canst  say  of  me ; 
Thy  smiles  I  value  not,  nor  frowns  don't  fear ; 
All's  one  to  me,  my  head  is  quiet  here. 
What  faults  you've  seen  in  me,  take  care  to  shun  ; 
Go  home,  and  see  there's  something  to  be  done.' 

— Of  course  there  is.  But  why  could  not  Mr 
Thomas  Wright  let  us  have  a  little  quiet,  as  well 
as  himself?  Did  he  despair  of  being  able  to  give 
us  any  pleasure  in  his  company,  alive  or  dead? 


CHAPTER  NINE 

THE  Reverend  Martin  Madan,  1790,  aged  sixty- four. 
His  mother  was  a  Cowper,  and  aunt  of  the  poet. 
He  made  himself  conspicuous  in  his  day,  and  very 
unpopular  with  the  religious  world,  by  writing  a 
book  called  '  Thelypthora '  (Female  Ruin),  in  which, 
upon  the  strength  of  the  Mosaic  law,  he  recom- 
mended polygamy  as  a  remedy  for  seduction.  His 
arguments  were  learned  and  acute,  but  accompanied 
by  so  much  bigotry,  that  in  conjunction  with  the 
usual  repugnance  of  the  community  to  touch  upon 
one  of  the  sorest  of  social  questions,  they  left  him 
at  the  mercy  of  opponents  who  might  otherwise  have 
found  them  very  puzzling.  The  reader  may  judge 
the  matter  for  himself  from  the  following  anecdote, 
which  Madan  relates  in  his  book. 

'  On  conversing,'  he  says,  '  with  a  gentleman  who 
is  a  Jew  on  this  subject,  he  told  me,  that  some  time 
ago  a  rich  young  Jew  at  Amsterdam  seduced  a  poor 
Jewess  who  was  a  servant-girl.  She  insisted  on  his 
publicly  marrying  her,  which  he  refused.  She  com- 
plained to  the  synagogue,  who  summoned  him  to 
in 


ii2   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

appear  before  them,  that  they  might  inquire  properly 
into  the  fact.  Finding  it  true,  they  sentenced  him 
to  marry  her  publicly.  He  would  not,  urging  the 
difference  of  his  rank  from  hers ;  but  this  plea  was 
not  allowed ;  they  urged  the  law  of  God  against 
him  ;  but  he  continuing  obstinate  in  his  refusal,  they 
excommunicated  him.  He  applied  to  some  of  the 
states  of  Holland,  that  they  would  interfere ;  but 
they  refused  it,  saying  the  synagogue  had  a  right 
to  enforce  their  own  laws.  I  asked  the  gentleman 
with  whom  I  was  conversing,  what  would  have 
been  the  case,  if  this  young  man  had  been  before 
married  to  another  woman  then  living.  He 
answered,  "  just  the  same ;  for,  by  the  law  of  Moses, 
no  man  can  take  a  virgin,  and  afterwards  abandon 
her  at  his  pleasure." '  * 

The  reader  will  see  the  difficulties  of  the  question, 
and  this  is  not  the  place  for  discussing  it ;  though 
it  is  impossible  for  a  mind  of  any  reflection  not  to 
be  crossed  with  a  deep  shade  of  regret  at  seeing 
how  constantly  the  far  greater  questions  which  in- 
volve it,  and  which  Mr  Madan  was  incompetent 
even  to  discuss,  are  evaded  and  put  off  by  moral 
and  statistical  writers  who  are  otherwise  conscien- 
tious men. 

George  Colman,  the  Elder,  1794,  aged  sixty-one, 
author  of  the  '  Jealous  Wife '  and  other  comedies ; 
joint  author  with  Garrick,  of  the  '  Clandestine 
*  Vol.  ii,  p.  336, 


H 


GEORGE  COLMAN  THE  ELDER 


ii4   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

Marriage ' ;  with  Bonnell  Thornton,  of  the  periodical 
work,  'The  Connoisseur';  and  translator  of  Terence's 
Plays,  and  Horace's  Art  of  Poetry.  An  elegant 
scholar,  and  lively  and  amusing,  but  in  no  respects 
a  great  writer.  He  comes  much  nearer  to  Murphy, 
than  to  Vanbrugh  and  Farquhar.  He  saw  pleasantly 
into  the  surface  of  things,  but  little  further. 

Dr  Warren,  in  1797,  aged  sixty-six.  The  elder 
of  two  celebrated  physicians  of  that  name,  father 
and  son.  Dr  Warren  seems  to  have  been  a  model 
of  his  class.  He  was  no  formalist,  but  impressed 
and  interested  his  patients  with  the  most  sterling 
qualities,  both  professional  and  personal,  and  had 
the  art  (a  very  great  and  important  art  in  a  physi- 
cian) of  entertaining  them,  and  keeping  up  their 
spirits.  We  have  heard  it  said,  on  the  best  of  all 
authorities  on  such  a  point — that  of  an  amiable  and 
intelligent  woman  —  that  the  '  finest  eyes  in  the 
world '  were  hereditary  in  the  Warrens ;  so  that, 
under  all  the  circumstances,  the  reader  will  not 
wonder  to  be  told,  that  Mrs  Inchbald,  who  was  one 
of  his  patients,  was  secretly  in  love  with  him,  and 
would  pace  Sackville  Street  after  dark,  purely  to 
have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  the  light  in  his  window. 
A  pleasant  answer  is  recorded  of  him  to  Lady 
Spencer.  Her  Ladyship  questioned  whether  the 
minds  of  physicians  must  not  be  frequently  em- 
bittered by  the  reflection,  that  a  different  mode  of 
treatment  might  have  saved  the  lives  of  their 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB        115 

patients.  Dr  Warren  thought  otherwise.  'The 
balance  between  satisfaction  and  remorse  must,'  he 
considered,  '  be  greatly  in  favour  of  satisfaction/ 
and,  as  an  instance  of  it,  he  hoped  he  should  have 
the  pleasure  of  curing  her  Ladyship  '  forty  times 
before  he  killed  her.' 

James  Elphinstone,  in  1804,  aged  eighty-eight ; 
the  good  Dominie  before  mentioned  ;  translator  of 
'  Martial.'  The  marble  tablet  inscribed  to  his 
memory,  on  the  outside  of  the  eastern  wall,  was 
set  up  by  his  wife  ;  which  reminds  us  of  an  omission 
in  our  notice  of  him  ;  to  wit,  that,  after  his  return 
from  a  visit  to  France,  when  a  young  man,  he  never 
altered  his  dress.  It  was  a  suit  of  drab  colour,  with 
bag-wig  and  toupee,  all  made  according  to  the 
fashion  which  prevailed  at  that  time.  Latterly, 
however,  he  more  than  once  offered  to  make  any 
change  in  it  'which  Mrs  Elphinstone  might  deem 
proper ' ;  but  the  good  lady's  eyes  had  been  so 
accustomed  to  see  her  husband  as  he  was,  that  she 
could  not  bear  the  thought  of  beholding  him  other- 
wise ;  or,  to  use  the  more  emphatic  language  of  one 
of  his  pupils  (the  late  Mr  Dallas,  the  novelist),  his 
virtues  and  worth  had  so  '  sanctified  his  appearance 
in  her  eyes,  that  she  would  have  thought  the  altera- 
tion a  sacrilege.'  It  appears,  also,  from  accounts 
given  us  by  the  same  gentleman,  that  the  worthy 
schoolmaster,  to  his  zeal  for  the  purity  of  the 
English  language,  added  no  less  for  that  of  the 


n6        THE    OLD    COURT  SUBURB 

appearance  of  the  ladies.  For  Mr  Dallas  tells  us, 
that,  when  any  'were  in  company  whose  sleeves 
were  at  a  distance  from  their  elbows,  or  whose 
bosoms  were  at  all  exposed,  he  would  fidget  from 
place  to  place,  look  askance  with  a  slight  convulsion 
of  his  left  eye,  and  never  rest  till  he  approached 
some  of  them,  and  pointing  to  their  arms,  would 
say,  "  Oh !  yes,  indeed,  it  is  very  pretty ;  but  it 
betrays  more  fashion  than  modesty,"  or  some  such 
familiar  phrase ;  after  which  he  became  very  good- 
humoured.'  One  fancies  good  Mrs  Elphinstone 
bridling  up,  at  these  times,  in  the  consciousness  of 
her  own  well-covered  charms ;  and  approving  her 
husband,  for  thus  combining  his  admiration  of  ladies' 
beauties  in  the  abstract,  with  objections  to  the  fair 
challengers  of  it  in  particular. 

But  we  shall  forget  the  place  of  which  we  are 
talking ;  though,  indeed,  to  speak  of  such  deceased 
people  as  the  Elphinstones,  is  the  next  thing  to 
looking  at  children  playing  over  their  graves.  Their 
smiles  excuse  one's  own. 

The  ensuing  record  on  a  stone  in  the  churchyard 
recalls  all  our  gravity : 

Caroline  Nelson  Bianchi, 
Died  June  28,  1807,  aged  5. 

Also, 

Francesco  Bianchi, 
Di  Cremona,  died  27th  Nov.,  1810,  aged  59. 


4PI 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB   117 

We  mention  both  these  names,  for  the  affecting 
reason,  that  they  record  a  father  who  died  broken- 
hearted for  the  loss  of  his  child.  He  was  a  dis- 
tinguished musical  composer,  and  wrote  operas  that 
were  favourites  with  the  Bantis  and  Billingtons  of 
his  day.  It  hardly  need  be  added  that  he  was  a 
most  amiable  and  benevolent  man.  What  a  death 
he  must  have  died  !  Three  years  of  wasting  sorrow ! 
Yet  death  thus  loses  its  sting ;  and  in  the  last 
moments  there  is  the  blissful  hope  of  rejoining  the 
object  of  affection.  Those  are  great  payments  of 
their  kind  ;  great  privileges ;  unable  as  the  sufferer 
must  be,  till  sure  of  dying,  to  rejoice  in  their  pos- 
session. 

Elizabeth  Inchbald,  before  mentioned,  1821.  She 
lies  at  the  western  extremity  of  the  churchyard, 
close  to  a  son  of  Canning,  the  verses  on  whose 
tombstone  by  his  father  have  little  merit  beyond 
that  of  conventional  elegance.  They  are  not  un- 
affecting ;  for  if  nature  speaks  at  all,  she  must  speak 
to  some  purpose,  whatever  be  her  language ;  but, 
compared  with  it  in  other  respects,  the  plain  prose 
tribute  to  Mrs  Inchbald  is  characteristic  of  the  pre- 
vailing difference  in  the  minds  of  the  two  parties — 
that  to  the  woman  being  truth  itself,  while  the 
statesman's  is  truth  after  a  fashion  ;  and  the  fashion 
addresses  itself  to  one's  attention  as  much  as  the 
truth. 


n8       THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

SACRED  TO  THE   MEMORY 
OF 

ELIZABETH  INCHBALD, 

WHOSE  WRITINGS  WILL  BE  CHERISHED, 
WHILE  TRUTH,   SIMPLICITY,  AND   FEELING 

COMMAND  PUBLIC  ADMIRATION  ; 
AND  WHOSE  RETIRED  AND   EXEMPLARY  LIFE 

CLOSED  AS   IT  EXISTED, 
IN  ACTS  OF  CHARITY  AND   BENOVELENCE. 

'  Existed '  is  hardly  the  right  word.  It  should  have 
been  '  was  passed,'  or  something  of  that  kind.  But 
it  is  intelligible,  and  was  true.  We  take  the  oppor- 
tunity of  observing,  in  addition  to  our  previous 
notice  of  this  lady,  that  although  we  have  spoken 
but  of  the  latest  and  profoundest  of  her  two  novels, 
the  '  Simple  Story,'  the  other,  '  Nature  and  Art,'  is 
also  full  of  genius,  and  would  alone  have  rendered 
the  steps  of  her  pilgrimage  in  this  life  worthy  the 
tracing.  It  is  one  of  the  earliest  works  of  fiction 
in  this  country,  that  sounded  in  the  ears  of  the 
prosperous  the  great  modern  note  of  Justice  to  All. 
No  reader,  of  the  least  reflection,  can  forget  the 
impression  made  on  him  by  the  trial  of  the  poor 
girl,  whose  crime  was  owing  to  the  very  judge  on 
the  bench  that  sentences  her  to  death. 

Reginald  Spofforth,  the  glee-composer,  in  1827,  aged 
thirty-seven.  There  is  a  tablet  to  his  memory  on  the 
left-hand  side  on  the  outer  wall  of  the  church,  close 
by  the  principal  entrance.  Bacon  has  compared  the 
fragrance  of  flowers  out-of-doors  to  the  coming  and 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    119 

going  of  the  warbling  of  music.  The  crescendos  and 
diminuendos  in  Spofforth's  beautiful  composition, 
'  Health  to  my  dear,'  always  remind  us  of  that 
charming  simile.  Musicians,  for  the  most  part,  are 
not  as  long-lived  as  painters,  or  even  as  poets,  though 
the  latter  are  so  excitable  a  race.  The  reason  is 
not,  perhaps,  so  much  that  the  musical  art  is  of  the 
more  sensuous  nature,  as  that  musicians,  owing  to 
the  demands  of  their  profession,  continue  all  their 
lives. to  go  more  into  company,  and  to  keep  late 
hours.  The  painter  (barring  corporate  jealousies) 
can  live  as  quiet  as  a  hermit ;  and  the  poet,  from 
the  habit  of  seeing  so  much  in  everything  that  he 
looks  upon,  makes  a  refuge  for  himself  against 
vicissitude  out  of  his  books  and  his  fireside. 

James  Mill,  in  June  1836,  aged  sixty-two;  the 
historian  of  British  India ; — distinguished  father  of 
an  illustrious  son.  He  has  a  tablet  on  one  of  the 
pillars  in  the  church.  Mr  Mill  persuaded  himself, 
that  a  man  who  had  never  been  in  India,  and  who 
knew  none  of  its  languages,  was  better  qualified  to 
write  a  history  of  that  country,  than  one  who  had. 
The  consequence  of  this  paradox  was,  that  after  his 
death,  the  bookseller  found  it  necessary  to  employ 
one  of  the  persons  thus  described  as  less  competent, 
for  the  purpose  of  correcting  the  mistakes  of  his 
predecessor.  Nevertheless,  Mr  Mill's  history  was  a 
work  so  remarkable  for  its  ability,  that  although  he 
had  found  great  fault  with  the  East  India  Company, 


i2o   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

they,  much  to  the  credit  of  their  feelings,  or  their 
policy,  appointed  him  to  a  considerable  office  in 
their  establishment.  Would  to  Heaven  they  had 
empowered  him  to  give  the  unfortunate  millions 
under  their  government  fewer  reasons  to  curse  their 
officers  in  general,  and  a  little  more  salt  to  their 
rice. 

George  Colman,  the  younger,  in  October  1836, 
aged  seventy-four ;  a  more  amusing,  though  not  so 
judicious  a  dramatist  as  his  father.  His  excellence 
lay  in  farce.  His  greatest  defect  was  in  sentiment ; 
for  which  he  substituted  noise  or  commonplace. 
In  the  decline  of  life,  he  attained  to  a  very  unlucky 
piece  of  prosperity.  He  was  appointed  Dramatic 
Censor ;  that  is  to  say,  reviser,  under  Government, 
of  plays  offered  to  managers  for  performance  ;  and 
in  the  exercise  of  this  office,  with  a  ludicrous  and 
unblushing  severity,  he  struck  out  of  the  pieces  sub- 
mitted to  him  the  least  oath  or  adjuration,  with 
which  his  own  plays  had  been  plentifully  garnished. 

Alfred  Hammond  Charnley,  1837,  aged  three 
years  and  eight  months ;  and  Thomas  Foxcroft 
Charnley,  1851,  aged  twenty-one  years.  We  know 
not  who  the  Charnleys  were ;  but  we  notice  them, 
because  their  grave,  the  only  one  in  the  churchyard 
so  distinguished,  is  adorned  with  flowers.  A  printed 
tablet  requests  people  not  to  pluck  the  flowers,  and 
the  request  appears  to  be  attended  to.  Humankind 
are  disposed  to  be  reasonable  and  feeling,  if  reason- 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB         121 

able  appeal  is  made  to  them,  and  a  chord  in  the 
heart  is  touched.     The  public  cemeteries,  which  we 
have   imitated   from    the    French,   appear    to    have 
brought   back   among    us    this    inclination    to    put 
flowers  on  graves.     The  custom  has  prevailed  more 
or  less  in  almost  all  parts  of  the  world,  according  as 
nations  and  religions  have  been  kindly.     It  is  the 
Puritans  who  would  seem  to  have  done  it  away  in 
England   and  Scotland.      Wales,  we  believe,  is  the 
only  part  of  the  island  in  which  it  has  never  been 
been  discontinued.     The  custom  is  surely  good  and 
desirable.      It  does  not  follow  that  those  who   are 
slow  to  resume  it  must  be  unfeeling,  any  more  than 
that  those  who  are  quick  to  do  so  must  of  necessity 
be  otherwise.     A  variety  of  thoughts  on  the  subject 
of  death  itself  may  produce  different  impressions  in 
this    respect    on    different    minds ;    but,    generally 
speaking,  evidence  is  in  favour  of  the  flowers.     You 
are  sure  that  those  who  put  them,  think  of  the  dead 
somehow.      Whatever   motives   may  be   mixed    up 
with  it,  the  respectful  attention  solicited  towards  the 
departed  is  unequivocal ;    and  this  circumstance   is 
pleasing  to  the  living,  and  may  benefit  their  disposi- 
tions.     They  think   that  their  own  memories  may 
probably  be  cherished  in  like  manner ;  and  thought- 
fulness  is  awakened  in  them,  towards  living  as  well 
as  dead.     It  is  a  peculiar  privilege,  too,  of  flowers, 
to  befit  every  place  in  which  they  appear,  and  to 
contribute  to  it  its  best  associations.     We  had  almost 


122   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

said,  they  are  incapable  of  being  put  to  unworthy 
use.  The  contradiction  would  look  simply  monstrous, 
and  the  flowers  be  pitied  for  the  insult.  No  butcher 
would  think  of  putting  them  in  a  slaughter-house ; 
unless,  indeed,  they  could  overpower  its  odour.  No 
inquisitor  (we  beg  the  butcher's  pardon  for  naming 
two  such  persons  together)  was  ever  cruel  or  im- 
pudent enough  to  wreathe  flowers  about  a  rack. 
Flowers,  besides  being  beautiful  themselves,  are 
suggestive  of  every  other  kind  of  beauty  ;  of  gentle- 
ness, of  youthfulness,  of  hope.  They  are  evidences 
of  Nature's  good-nature ;  proofs  manifest  that  she 
means  us  well,  and  more  than  well ;  that  she  loves 
to  give  us  the  beautiful  in  addition  to  the  useful. 
They  neutralise  bad  with  good  ;  beautify  good  itself ; 
make  life  livelier ;  human  bloom  more  blooming ; 
and  anticipate  the  spring  of  Heaven  over  the  winter 
of  the  grave.  Their  very  frailty,  and  the  shortness 
of  their  lives,  please  us,  because  of  this  their  inde- 
structible association  with  beauty ;  for  while  they 
make  us  regret  our  own  like  transitory  existence,  they 
soothe  us  with  a  consciousness,  however  dim,  of  our 
power  to  perceive  beauty  ;  therefore  of  our  link  with 
something  divine  and  deathless,  and  of  our  right  to 
hope  that  immortal  thoughts  will  have  immortal 
realisation.  And  it  is  for  all  these  reasons  the 
flowers  on  graves  are  beautiful,  and  that  we  hope 
to  see  them  prosper  accordingly. 

But  we  have  two  more  reasons  for  noticing  the 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB       123 

particular  grave  before  us.  One  is,  that  when  we 
saw  it  for  the  first  time,  a  dog  came  nestling  against 
it,  as  if  with  affection ;  taking  up  his  bed  (in  which 
we  left  him),  as  though  he  had  again  settled  himself 
beside  a  master.  The  other,  that  while  again  look- 
ing at  the  grave,  and  thinking  how  becomingly  the 
flowers  were  attended  to,  being  as  fresh  as  when 
we  saw  them  before,  a  voice  behind  us  said  gently : 
'  Those  are  my  dear  children.'  It  was  the  mother. 
She  had  seen  us,  perhaps,  looking  longer  than  was 
customary,  and  thus  been  induced  to  speak.  We 
violate  no  delicacy  in  mentioning  the  circumstance. 
Records  on  tombstones  are  introducers  of  the  living 
to  the  dead  ;  makers  of  mortal  acquaintances ;  and 
'  one  touch  of  nature,'  in  making  the  '  whole  world 
kin,'  gives  them  the  right  of  speaking  like  kindred, 
to,  and  of,  one  another.  We  expressed  to  the  good 
parent  our  pleasure  at  seeing  the  flowers  so  well 
kept,  and  for  so  long  a  time.  She  said  they  would 
be  so  as  long  as  she  lived. 

It  is  impossible  not  to  respect  and  sympathise 
with  feelings  like  these.  We  should  say,  neverthe- 
less (and  as  questions  of  this  kind  are  of  general 
interest,  we  address  the  remark  to  all  loving  sur- 
vivors), that  although  a  life-long  observance  of 
such  attentions  could  do  anything  but  dishonour 
to  living  or  dead,  the  discontinuance  of  it,  after 
a  certain  lapse  of  time,  could  not,  of  necessity,  be 
a  reproach  to  either ;  for  the  practice  concerns  the 


124   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

feelings  of  the  one  still  more  than  the  memory  of 
the  other ;  and  in  cases  where  it  might  keep  open 
the  wounds  of  remembrance  too  long  and  too  sorely, 
no  loving  persons,  while  alive,  could  wish  that  their 
survivors  should  take  such  pains  to  hinder  them- 
selves from  being  relieved.  It  is  natural  for  some 
time,  often  for  too  long  a  time,  to  associate  with 
the  idea  of  the  departed,  the  bodies  in  which  they 
lived,  and  in  which  we  loved  them.  Few  of  us 
can  so  spiritualise  their  new  condition  all  at  once, 
as  to  visit  them  in  thought  nowhere  but  in  another 
world.  We  have  been  too  much  accustomed  to 
them  bodily,  in  this.  In  fact,  they  are  still  bodily 
with  us ;  still  in  our  world,  if  not  on  it ;  and  for  a 
time  we  must  reconcile  that  thought  to  ourselves 
as  well  as  we  can  ;  warm  it  with  our  tears ;  put  it 
on  an  equality  with  us,  by  means  of  our  very 
sorrow,  from  which,  whatsoever  its  other  disadvan- 
tages, it  is  now  exempt ;  give  it  earthly  privileges 
of  some  kind,  whether  of  flowers,  or  other  fondness. 
Nothing  but  urn-burial  could  help  us  better ; 
could  shorten  the  sense  of  the  interval  between 
one  world  and  the  other ;  between  the  corporeal 
and  the  spiritual  condition  ;  and  to  the  practice  of 
urn-burial  the  nations  must  surely  return.  Popula- 
tion will  render  it  unavoidable.  But  in  the  mean- 
time, we  must  gradually  let  our  thoughts  of  the 
body  decay,  even  as  the  body  itself  decays ;  must 
consent  to  part  with  it,  and  become  wholly  spiritual, 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB   125 

wholly  sensible  that  its  best  affections  were  things 
of  the  mind  and  heart ;  and  that  as  those,  while 
in  this  world,  could  triumph  over  thoughts  of  death, 
so  they  are  now  ascertaining  why  they  were  enabled 
to  do  so,  in  another. 

Let  flowers,  therefore,  be  put  awhile  on  graves, 
and  contend  with  the  idea  of  death.  Let  them  con- 
tend with  it,  if  we  please,  as  long  as  we  live,  pro- 
vided our  own  lives  cannot  in  the  nature  of  things 
be  long ;  in  which  case,  we  are,  in  a  manner,  making 
our  own  mortal  bed  with  those  of  the  departed, 
and  preparing  to  sleep  sweetly  together  till  the 
great  morning.  But  under  other  circumstances,  let 
us  learn  to  be  content  that  the  flowers  die,  and 
that  our  companions  have  gone  away ;  for  go  we 
shall  ourselves ;  and  it  is  fit  that  we  believe  them 
gone  into  the  only  state  in  which  they  cannot  perish. 


CHAPTER 
TEN 

RETURNING  from  the  church  into  the 
High  Street,  there  presents  itself,  not 
many  yards  further,  on  the  right  side 
of  the  way,  a  curious-looking  brick 
edifice,  at  once  slender  and  robust 
(if  the  reader  can  imagine  such 
a  combination) ;  or,  tall  and  sturdy ;  or,  narrow, 
compact,  and  thick  in  the  walls.  Over  the  second 
storey  is  a  square  tower,  probably  intended  to  hold  a 
bell ;  and  originally  there  was  another  tower  above 
that,  which  must  have  made  the  whole  edifice  appear 
unaccountably  tall.  Finally,  to  adopt  the  convenient 
word  of  'that  late  eminent  antiquary,  Mr  John 
Carter,'  there  stands  on  each  side  of  the  first  storey, 
the  '  costumic  statue  of  a  charity-child.' 

It  is  the  old  Kensington  Charity  School,  built  by 
Sir  John  Vanbrugh  ;  now  a  savings'  bank,  with  a  new 
schoolroom  by  the  side  of  it. 

Sir  John,  as  is  well  known,  was  a  wit  full  of  mirth 
in  his  comedies,  and  an  architect  full  of  gravity  in 
his  buildings.  He  was  the  son  of  a  Dutchman  by 
a  French  mother.  A  certain  Dr  Evans,  who  was 
addicted  to  the  like  extremes  in  literature,  though 

126 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    127 

neither  his  mirth  nor  his  gravity  was  so  good,  wrote 
a  jesting  epitaph  on  Sir  John,  the  final  couplet  of 
which  has  become  famous  : 

'  Lie  heavy  on  him,  earth,  for  he 
Laid  many  a  heavy  load  on  thee.' 

Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  however,  was  of  opinion  that 
Vanbrugh's  style  was  misconstrued,  and  that  it  was 
very  poetical  and  noble.  The  present  building  has 
certainly  contrived  to  look  heavy,  even  though  it  is 
narrow  ;  but  nobody  who  looks  at  it  can  doubt  that 
it  was  built  to  endure.  If  suffered  to  remain,  it  will, 
even  now,  probably  outlast  the  whole  of  Kensington. 
Look  at  it,  reader,  as  you  go,  with  an  eye  to  this 
supposition.  Think,  also,  what  interest  a  celebrated 
man  can  attach  to  a  homely  structure ;  and  wonder 
to  reflect,  that  he  who  built  it  was  the  same  '  Captain 
Vanbrugh,'  a  man  of '  wit  and  pleasure 
about  town,'  who  wrote  the  characters 
of  romping  Miss  Hoyden  and  the  dandy 
Lord  Foppington. 

Next  to  Sir  John  Vanbrugh's  old 
edifice  is  the  new  Vestry  Hall,  a 
building  lately  erected  in  the  style 
that  prevailed  in  the  reign  of  James 
the  First,  and  which  has  acquired  a 
natural  popularity  in  this  suburb  from 
the  presence  of  Holland  House.  There 
is  something  in  the  style,  too,  very  suit- 


128   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

able  to  the  British  climate,  its  bay-windows  largely  ad- 
mitting the  light,  while  the  comparatively  blind  and 
solid  walls  are  characteristic  of  warmth  and  comfort. 
The  warm  colours,  also,  of  yellow  and  red,  that  prevail 
in  the  exterior  of  these  buildings,  and  the  bricks  of 
which  they  are  composed,  in  preference  to  stone  and 
stucco,  are  far  better  for  us  than  the  cold  whites  of 
the  latter.  Honest  old  red  is  the  best  of  all.  The 
miserablest  object  in  England  on  a  rainy  day  (next 
to  the  pauper  that  inhabits  it)  is  a  tumble-down  hut 
of  lath  and  plaster. 

Nearly  opposite  the  new  Vestry  Hall,  in  the  house 
now  occupied  by  Mr  Wright,  an  ironmonger,  lived 
for  some  years  the  once  celebrated  political  writer, 
William  Cobbett. 

Cobbett,  as  some  of  our  readers  may  remember, 
was  a  self-taught  man  of  great  natural  abilities,  who, 
from  excess  of  self-esteem,  defect  of  sympathy  out 
of  the  pale  of  his  own  sphere,  and  a  want  of  that 
scholarly  'discipline  of  humanity,'  of  which  such  men 
stand  particularly  in  need,  went  from  one  extreme 
in  politics  to  another  with  anything  but  misgiving  ; 
injured  the  good  which  he  otherwise  did  to  Reform, 
by  a  long  course  of  obloquy  and  exaggeration ; 
brought  his  courage  and  even  his  principles  into 
question,  by  retreats  before  his  opponents,  and 
apparent  compromises  with  Government ;  and  ended 
a  life  of  indomitable  industry,  by  obtaining  the 
reputation  rather  of  a  powerful  and  amusing,  than 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    129 

estimable  or  lasting  writer.  Readers  of  his  '  Political 
Register '  will  not  easily  forget  how  he  lorded  it  over 
public  men,  as  if  they  knew  nothing,  and  he  knew 
everything ;  or  what  letters  he  addressed  to  them, 
in  a  style  beyond  the  unceremonious  ;  such  as  those 
to  the  Bishop  of  London,  beginning  '  Bishop,'  and 
to  Sir  Robert  Peel,  whom  he  addressed  as  '  Peel's- 
Bill-Peel,'  and  saluted  simply  by  his  surname. 

Hazlitt  said  of  him,  that  had  everything  been  done 
as  he  desired  in  Church  and  State,  he  would  have 
differed  with  it  all  next  day,  out  of  the  pure  pleasure 
of  opposition. 

Cobbett's  worse  propensity  was  to  exult  over  the 
fallen.  His  implied  curses  of  the  hapless  George 
the  Third,  who  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  fine 
and  imprisonment  which  produced  them,  are  too 
shocking  to  be  repeated.  He  crowed  unmercifully 
over  the  suicide  of  Lord  Castlereagh ;  and,  ridicu- 
lously as  ungenerously,  pronounced  Walter  Scott, 
during  his  decline,  and  after  the  bankruptcy  which 
he  laboured  so  heroically  to  avert,  to  have  been 
nothing  but  a  'humbug.' 

But  the  vigour  which  he  thus  abused  was  not  to 
be  denied.  Bating  an  occasional  parade  of  the  little 
scholarship  which  he  had  acquired,  and  which  some- 
times betrayed  him  into  incorrectness,  even  of  the 
grammar  which  he  professed  to  teach,  nothing  could 
surpass  the  pure  vigorous,  idiomatical  style  of  his 
general  writing,  or  the  graphical  descriptions  he  would 
I 


130   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

give  both  of  men  and  things,  whether  in  artificial  life 
or  in  matters  connected  with  his  agricultural  experi- 
ence. A  volume  of  select  passages  from  his  writings, 
chiefly  of  this  kind,  might  be  of  permanent  service 
to  his  name ;  which,  otherwise,  will  be  stifled  under 
the  load  of  rubbish  with  which  he  mixed  it. 

At  the  back  of  his  house  at  Kensington,  in  ground 
now  devoted  to  other  purposes,  and  also  at  a  farm, 
which  he  possessed  at  the  same  time,  not  far  off 
(at  Barn-Elm),  Cobbett  cultivated  his  Indian  corn, 
his  American  Forest  Trees,  his  pigs,  poultry,  and 
butchers'  meat,  all  which  he  pronounced  to  be  the 
best  that  were  ever  beheld ;  but  the  aristocratic 
suburb  did  not  prove  a  congenial  soil,  and  he  quitted 
it,  a  bankrupt.  He  appears,  nevertheless,  to  have 
succeeded,  upon  the  whole,  in  a  worldly  point  of 
view,  and  ultimately  made  his  way  into  Parliament ; 
a  triumph,  however,  which  was  probably  the  death 
of  him,  owing  to  the  late  hours  and  bad  air  for  which 
he  exchanged  his  farming  habits  of  life.  At  all 
events,  he  did  not  survive  it  long.  Like  many  men 
who  make  a  great  noise  in  public,  he  seems  to  have 
been  a  good,  quiet  sort  of  man  in  private ;  occasion- 
ally blustering  a  little,  perhaps,  at  his  workmen,  and 
more  dictatorial  to  them  than  he  would  have  liked 
others  to  be  to  himself;  but  a  good  husband  and 
father,  a  pleasant  companion  ;  and  his  family  seem 
to  have  heartily  lamented  him  when  he  died  ;  the 
best  of  all  testimonies  to  private  worth.  His  appear- 


~^ 


%  '  TKcOH  (Krityy£hooL  i 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB        131 

ance  (to  judge  by  his  portraits,  for  we  never  saw  him) 
was  characteristic  of  the  man,  except  as  regarded 
vanity.  He  dressed  plainly  and  unaffectedly ;  was 
strong  and  well-built ;  and  had  a  large  forehead, 
and  roundish  and  somewhat  small  features,  for  the 
size  of  his  cheeks,  a  disparity  betokening  greater 
will  than  self-control. 

Cobbett  said  little  of  Kensington,  considering  the 
time  he  lived  there.  It  was  not  to  be  expected, 
indeed,  that  he  could  be  fond  of  a  place  that  had 
a  palace  at  one  end  of  it,  the  mansion  of  a  Whig 
lord  at  the  other,  and  in  which  he  did  not  find 
himself  either  welcome  or  prosperous.  What  he 
does  say,  chiefly  concerns  his  corn  and  his  trees. 
There  are  but  one  or  two  passages  characteristic  of 
the  locality,  and  those  are  more  so  of  himself,  and 
not  unamusing.  In  one  of  them  he  speaks  of  the 
poor  Irish,  who  stand  at  the  corners  of  the  streets, 
1  their  rags  dancing  with  the  wind ' ;  but  he  does 
it  rather  to  rebuke  than  to  pity  them.  He  could 
not  get  them  to  work  for  victuals  instead  of  money ; 
not  taking  into  consideration,  that  the  poor,  rack- 
rented  creatures  could  not  pay  their  landlord  without 
it.  A  correspondent  proposed  to  pay  Cobbett  him- 
self in  victuals  for  his  Weekly  Register,  two  pounds 
of  mutton  per  quarter ;  but  the  rebuker  of  the  Irish 
is  very  angry  at  this  ;  and  assuming,  with  a  somewhat 
Irish  and  self-refuting  logic,  that  a  man  who  did 
not  approve  of  payments  in  meat,  must  be  addicted 


[32    THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

to  slops,  and  have  a  dirty  complexion,  calls  him  a 
'tea-kettle  reptile,'  and   a  'squalid  wretch.' 

The  other  passage  gives  us  his  opinion  of  the 
reviews  in  Hyde  Park,  and  their  consumption  of 
gunpowder.  His  compliments  to  American  economy 
in  the  use  of  that  material,  are  hardly  flattering  to 
a  great  nation  ;  but  everything  was  excessive  in  the 
praise  and  blame  which  he  bestowed,  and,  conse- 
quently, was  in  the  habit  of  undoing  itself. 

Speaking  of  the  Duke  of  Clarence's  appointment 
to  the  office  of  Lord  High  Admiral,  he  says,  that 
when  he  first  heard  of  it,  he  was  '  very  much  pleased, 
because  he  thought  it  would  tend  to  break  up  the 
Scotch  phalanx,  which  appeared  to  him  to  be  taking 
the  whole  navy  by  storm.'  He  adds : 

'  The  manner  of  executing  the  office  was  a  thing 
which  I  had  little  time  to  attend  to  ;  but  I  must 
confess,  that  I  soon  became  tired  of  the  apparent 
incessant  visiting  of  the  seaports,  and  the  firing  of 
salutes.  I  see  the  Americans  getting  forward  with 
a  navy,  fit  to  meet  us  in  war,  without  more  noise 
than  is  made  by  half-a-dozen  mice,  when  they  get 
into  my  pantry  or  cupboard.  These  Yankees  have 
an  education  wonderfully  well  calculated  to  make 
them  economical  in  the  affairs  of  war.  I  never  saw 
one  of  them  in  my  life,  man  or  boy,  shoot  at  any 
living  thing  without  killing  it.  A  Yankee  never 
discharges  his  gun  at  anything,  until  he  has  made 
a  calculation  of  the  value  of  the  thing ;  and  if  that 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB        133 

value  does  not  exceed  the  value  of  the  powder  and 
the  shot,  the  gun  remains  with  the  charge  in  it, 
until  something  presents  itself  of  value  surpassing 
that  of  the  charge.  In  shooting  at  partridges,  quails, 
squirrels,  and  other  things  of  the  land  kind,  they 
always  count  the  number  of  shot  they  put  into  the 
gun,  and  will  put  in  no  more  than  they  think  the 
carcass  of  the  animal  will  pay  for,  leaving  a  certain 
clear  profit,  after  the  cost  of  labour.  These  are 
most  excellent  principles  to  be  imbibed  by  those 
who  are  destined  to  conduct  the  affairs  of  war ;  and 
when  I,  being  in  a  seaport,  hear  bang,  bang,  bang, 
on  one  side  of  me,  answered  by  other  bangs  on  the 
other  side,  and  find  no  soul  that  can  tell  me  what 
the  noise  is  for ;  or  when  I,  being  at  Kensington, 
hear,  coming  from  Hyde  Park,  pop,  pop,  pop — pop, 
pop — pop,  pop,  pop,  pop,  the  cause  of  which  I 
remember  but  too  well ;  when  I  hear  these  sounds, 
I  cannot  help  lamenting,  that  our  commanders,  by 
sea  and  land,  did  not  receive  their  education  among 
the  Yankees,  who  have  raised  a  fleet,  the  existence 
of  which  we  shall  one  day  have  to  rue ;  and  I  should 
not  be  afraid  to  bet  all  I  have  in  the  world,  that 
they  have  done  it  without  wasting  one  single  pound 
of  powder.'* 

Fancy  our  young  Nelsons  and  Jervises  going  to 
America  to  learn  how  to  shoot ;  and  their  unerring 
teachers,  man  or  boy,  holding  their  hands  before  they 

*  Political  Register,  vol.  Ixvi.  p.  267. 


i34   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

begin,  till  they  counted  the  relative  values  of  the 
charge  and  the  cock-sparrow. 

Never,  we  verily  believe,  was  gunpowder  expended 
at  less  cost,  or  to  better  purpose,  than  in  our  reviews 
and  royal  salutes ;  for  the  sounds  reach  the  ears  of 
despots.  Nobler  spectacles  of  warlike  power  were 
never  beheld,  that  those  which  were  presented  to 
the  world  the  other  day  under  the  presidency  of  a 
sovereign,  who  being  a  wife  and  mother,  must  needs 
represent  peace  itself,  and  hatred  of  wars  ;  but  being 
a  queen  also,  must  also  represent  the  power,  which 
warns,  and  is  prepared  to  punish,  the  infractors  of 
peace.  Most  desirable  is  peace ;  most  horrible  and 
detestable  is  war ;  and  no  magnanimity  will  have 
been  wanting  to  endure  its  idiotical  babble,  and 
endeavour  to  stay  its  arm.  But  if  the  blow  must 
be  struck,  it  must.  And  we  hope  and  believe,  that 
if  ever  the  existence  of  American  power  is  to  be 
rued  by  the  Old  World,  it  will  be  not  in  antagonism 
with  England,  but  side  by  side  with  it,  and  to  the 
final  confusion  of  all  who  hate  the  crowned  freedom 
of  the  one,  still  more,  perhaps,  than  the  republicanism 
of  its  brother ;  for  England  disproves  their  identi- 
fication of  monarchical  government  with  despotic 
will. 

Cobbett's  premises  at  the  back  neighboured  those 
of  a  small  mansion,  Scarsdale  House,  which  he  must 
have  considered  an  eyesore,  for  it  belonged  to  a 
noble  family,  and  was  then  a  boarding-school ;  a 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    135 

thing  which  he  hated,  for  its  inducing  tradesmen's 
and  farmers'  daughters  to  play  on  the  pianoforte. 
He  saw  the  dangers  attending  the  elevation  of  ranks 
in  society,  but  none  of  its  advantages,  except  in 


regard  to  eating  and  drinking,  and  those  he  would 
have  confined  to  his  own  beef  and  bacon.  A  little 
onward  from  Mr  Wright's  door,  is  Wright's  Lane, 
which  turns  out  of  High  Street,  and,  containing 
Scarsdale  House  and  Scarsdale  Terrace,  leads  round 


136   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

by  a  pleasant,  sequestered  corner  into  the  fields, 
and  terminates  this  point  of  Kensington  with  the 
New  Workhouse.  Scarsdale  House,  now  no  longer 
a  boarding-school,  appears  to  have  returned  into  the 
occupation  of  the  family  who  are  understood  to  have 
built  it ;  for  its  present  inmate  is  the  Hon.  E.  Curzon, 
one  of  the  gentlemen  who  contributed  to  the  collec- 
tion of  cabinet-work  at  Gore  House.  From  an 
intimation,  however,  in  Faulkner,  it  would  seem  as 
if  it  had  been  called  Scarsdale  House  before  the 
creation  of  the  title  in  the  Curzon  and  Howe-Curzon 
families ;  in  which  case,  it  was  probably  built  by 
the  Earl  of  Scarsdale,  whose  family  name  was  Leake, 
the  Scarsdale  celebrated  by  Pope  and  Rowe  for  his 
love  of  the  bottle  and  of  Mrs  Bracegirdle. 

'  Each  mortal  has  his  pleasure  ; — none  deny 
Scarsdale  his  bottle,  Darty  his  ham-pie.' 

Darty  was  Dartineuf,  or  Dartiquenave  (a  famous 
epicure). 

'  Do  not  most  fragrant  Earl  disclaim 
Thy  bright,  thy  reputable  flame 

To  Bracegirdle  the  brown  ; 

But  publicly  espouse  the  dame, 

And  say,  G —  d —  the  town.' 

Earl  Leake,  by  other  accounts  besides  these,  does 
not  appear  to  have  been  a  person  whom  '  Bracegirdle 
the  brown,'  the  charmer  of  the  age,  would  have 
thought  it  any  very  desirable  honour  to  marry. 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB        137 

We  hope,  therefore,  that  the  more  respectable 
Scarsdales,  the  Curzons,  were  always  possessors  of 
the  house,  and  that,  in  displacing  the  boarding- 
school,  they  illustrate,  as  in  greater  instances,  the 
injunction  of  their  curious  motto,  '  Let  Curzon  hold 
what  Curzon  held.' 

The  corner,  above-mentioned,  of  Wright's  Lane, 
contains  a  batch  of  good  old  family  houses,  one  of 
which  belonged  to  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  though  it  is 
not  known  that  he  ever  lived  in  it.  A  house  in 
which  he  did  live  we  shall  come  to  by-and-by. 

The  Workhouse  to  which  you  arrive  in  turning  by 
this  corner,  is  a  large,  handsome,  brick  building,  in 
the  old  style  before-mentioned,  possessed  of  a  garden 
with  seats  in  it,  and  looking  (upon  the  old  principle 
of  association  in  such  matters)  more  like  a  building 
for  a  lord  than  for  a  set  of  paupers.  Paupers, 
however,  by  the  help  of  Christianity,  have  been  dis- 
covered, by  the  wiser  portion  of  their  fellow-creatures, 
to  be  persons  whom  it  is  better  to  treat  kindly  than 
contemptuously ;  and  hence,  as  new  workhouses 
arise,  something  is  done  to  rescue  the  pauper-mind 
from  its  worst,  most  hopeless,  and  most  exasperating 
sense  of  degradation,  and  to  let  it  participate  in 
some  of  the  good  consequences  of  industry  and 
refinement. 


CHAPTER   ELEVEN 

RETURNING  into  the  road,  we  here  quit  the  High 
Street,  and  have  the  Terrace  on  our  left  hand,  and 
Lower  Phillimore  Place  on  the  other  side  of  the 
way. 

Terrace,  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  instances 
in  the  suburbs,  is  a  ridiculous  word  ;  for  the  ground 
is  as  flat  as  any  around  it,  and  terrace  (a  mound 
of  earth)  implies  height  and  dignity. 

'  May  thy  lofty  head  be  crown'd, 
With  many  a  tower  and  terrace.' 

MILTON. 

The  modern  passion  for  the  fine  names  and 
foreign  words  '  hath  a  perferment  in  it.'  It  is  one 
of  the  consequences  of  the  general  rise  in  society. 
But  people  would  do  well  to  learn  the  meanings 
of  the  words  before  they  employ  them ;  not  to 
christen  young  ladies  Blanche,  who  are  swarthy ; 
cry  '  bravo '  (brave  he  /)  to  female  singers,  instead 
of  '  brava ' ;  nor  give  the  appellation  of  heights  to 
rows  of  houses  that  are  on  a  level  with  a  valley. 

138 


THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB        139 

In  Kensington,  Sir  David  Wilkie,  the  painter, 
passed  the  greater  part  of  his  life,  after  quitting 
Scotland,  and  chiefly  in  Lower  Phillimore  Place.  For 
nearly  three  years,  beginning  with  the  autumn  of 
1811,  he  dates  his  letters  from  No.  29,  which  was 
the  abode  of  a  friend  ;  but  he  then  took  one  of  his 
own,  No.  24,  in  which  he  resided  with  his  mother 
and  sister  till  the  autumn  of  1824,  when  he  removed 
with  them  into  the  house  on  the  Terrace,  called 
Shaftesbury  House,  which  has  since  been  rebuilt 
on  a  larger  scale.  Why  it  is  called  Shaftesbury 
House,  we  cannot  learn  ;  perhaps  because  the  third 
Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  the  author  of  the  '  Characteris- 
ticks,'  who  was  a  visitor  at  the  Palace,  occupied  it 
for  a  while  before  he  took  his  house  at  Little 
Chelsea.  Probably,  there  is  not  an  old  house  in 
Kensington  in  which  some  distinguished  person 
has  not  resided,  during  the  reigns  in  which  the 
court  was  held  there. 

Wilkie  was  a  gentle,  kindly,  considerate  man, 
with  a  figure  not  insignificant,  though  not  elegant, 
an  arch  eye,  and  a  large,  good-humoured  mouth. 
Such,  at  least,  was  his  appearance  during  the  time  of 
life  at  which  we  remember  him.  He  had  an  original 
genius  for  depicturing  humble  life,  and  could  throw 
into  it  a  dash  of  the  comic  ;  though  he  did  not 
possess  the  Flemish  and  Dutch  eye  for  colour ;  and 
there  was  altogether  more  truth  than  enjoyment 
in  his  style,  sometimes  a  tendency  to  dwell  on 


SIR^AVID  WILKIK 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB        141 

moral  and  even  physical  pains,  the  sufferers  of 
which  neutralised  the  sympathy  which  they  needed 
by  a  look  of  sordid  dulness. 

Hazlitt,  out  of  resentment  against  the  aristocracy 
for  giving  their  patronage  to  this  kind  of  art  at  the 
expense  of  higher,  of  which  he  thought  them  jealous 
(and  perhaps,  also,  in  order  to  vex  Wilkie  himself, 
who  was  very  deferential  to  rank),  called  it  the 
'  pauper  style.'  The  appellation,  we  suspect,  pro- 
duced the  vexation  intended,  and  was  one  of  the 
causes  of  Sir  David's  efforts  to  rise  into  a  manner 
altogether  different ;  in  which  he  was  not  successful. 
His  notion  that  the  persons  in  the  Old  and  New 
Testament  should  all  have  the  native,  that  is  to  say, 
Syrian  or  Judaical  look,  showed  the  restricted  and 
literal  turn  of  his  mind.  He  fancied  that  this  kind 
of  truth  would  the  more  recommend  them  to  the 
lovers  of  truth  in  general ;  not  seeing  that  the  local 
peculiarity  might  hurt  the  universality  of  the  im- 
pression ;  for  though  all  the  world  feel  more  or  less 
in  the  same  manner,  they  are  not  fond  of  seeing 
the  manner  qualified  by  that  of  any  one  particular 
nation ;  especially,  too,  when  the  nation  has  not 
been  associated  in  their  minds  with  anything  very 
acceptable,  or  even  with  acquiescence  in  the  im- 
pression to  be  made.  The  next  step  in  this  direc- 
tion might  be  to  represent  St  Paul  as  a  man  of 
an  insignificant  presence,  because  the  apostle  so 
describes  himself;  or  to  get  a  stammering  man  to 


142    THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

sit  for  the  portrait  of  Moses,  because  the  great 
lawgiver  had  an  impediment  in  his  speech.  This 
is  not  what  Raphael  did  when  he  painted  Paul 
preaching  at  Athens,  with  mighty,  uplifted  arms ; 
nor  what  Michael  Angelo  did,  when  he  seated 
Moses  in  the  chair  of  Sinai,  indignantly  overlook- 
ing all  beneath  him,  and  ready  to  hurl  down  the 
tables  of  stone,  like  thunderbolts,  on  the  heads  of 
his  misbelieving  followers.  We  do  not  mean  to 
say  that  lovers  of  truth  might  not  be  found,  who 
would  accord  with  Sir  David's  opinion,  and  let 
good  consequences  take  their  chance ;  but  he  did 
not  look  at  the  matter  in  this  comprehensive  light. 
He  thought  that  there  was  no  risk  of  chance, 
remote  or  immediate,  except  in  not  making  the 
local  history  local  enough ;  and  he  did  not  see  that 
this  would  have  endangered  the  object  he  had  in 
view,  and  served  to  contract  instead  of  extending  it. 

Though  Wilkie  never  married,  one  of  the  best 
features  in  his  character  was  domesticity.  He  was 
no  sooner  rich  enough,  than  he  brought  his  mother 
and  sister  from  Scotland,  in  order  that  they  might 
partake  his  prosperity  in  the  way  most  agreeable 
to  family  affections.  He  was  also  careful  to  give 
them  news  of  himself  before  they  came.  As  it  is 
pleasant  to  know  the  daily  habits  of  distinguished 
men,  we  give  the  following  account  of  his  life  at 
Kensington  from  one  of  his  letters  to  his  sister  : — 

' The    anxiety    my    mother    has    laboured    under 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    143 

about  my  health,  on  seeing  that  I  had  not  with 
my  own  hand  directed  the  newspaper,  is  entirely 
groundless.  I  am  as  well  now  as  I  have  been  for 
a  very  long  time,  and  am  going  on  with  the  paint- 
ing in  my  usual  moderate  way.  I  am  sometimes 
glad  to  get  anybody  to  direct  the  newspaper  on 
the  Monday  forenoon,  for  the  sake  of  saving  time, 
which  is  an  important  consideration  in  these  short 
days.  Everybody  I  meet  with  compliments  me  on 
the  improvement  of  my  looks,  and  I  am  taking  all 
the  means  in  my  power  to  retain  my  improved 
appearance.  I  dine,  as  formerly,  at  two  o'clock, 
paint  two  hours  in  the  forenoon  and  two  hours 
in  the  afternoon,  and  take  a  short  walk  in  the 
park  or  through  the  fields  twice  a  day.  In  the 
evening,  I  go  on  with  the  mathematics,  which 
I  take  great  delight  in ;  and  I  have  also  begun 
a  system  of  algebra,  a  study  I  should  like  to  learn 
something  of  too.' 

When  his  mother  and  sister  came,  the  good  artist 
took  care  that  as  much  as  possible  of  the  old  house- 
hold furniture,  to  which  their  eyes  had  been  habitu- 
ated, should  come  with  them  from  Scotland  ;  and 
he  said  (his  biographer  informs  us)  that  '  if  he  were 
desired  to  name  the  happiest  hour  of  his  life,  it  was 
when  he  saw  his. honoured  mother  and  much-loved 
sister  sitting  beside  him  whilst  he  was  painting.' 

The  'short  walk  through  the  fields'  must  have 
been  in  those  between  Kensington,  Brompton,  and 


144   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

Little    Chelsea,   now   fast    disappearing    before   the 
growth  of  streets. 

In  Shaftesbury  House  the  sunny  portion  of  Wilkie's 
life  terminated  in  clouds  that  gathered  suddenly  and 
darkly  upon  him ;  —  his  mother  dying ;  his  sister 
losing  the  man  she  was  about  to  marry  ;  his  eldest 
brother  dead,  in  India ;  a  second  brother  coming 
home  to  die,  from  Canada  ;  a  younger  brother  in- 
volved in  commercial  difficulties ;  and  the  artist 
himself,  who  was  too  generous  not  to  suffer  in  every 
way  with  his  family,  losing  further  money  by  the 
failure  of  houses,  and  failing  in  his  own  health,  which 
he  never  recovered.  Such  are  the  calamities  to  which 
comic  as  well  as  tragic  painters  are  liable,  in  order 
that  all  men  may  share  and  share  alike,  till  '  tears 
can  be  wiped  from  off  all  faces.'  Wilkie  subsequently 
removed  to  Vicarage  Place,  in  Church  Street ;  and 
this,  his  last  abode  in  Kensington,  was  also  his 
last  in  England.  He  travelled  for  health's  and 
study's  sake,  in  Italy,  Germany,  and  Spain  ;  returned, 
and  travelled  again,  going  to  Palestine,  and  other 
dominions  of  the  Sultan,  whose  portrait  he  painted ; 
made  other  ineffectual  attempts  to  become  an  artist 
out  of  his  first  line ;  and  with  a  strangely  romantic 
end  for  one  who  began  with  the  line  which  he  ought 
never  to  have  forsaken,  died  on  his  way  home,  and 
was  buried  off  Gibraltar,  in  the  great  deep. 

After  all,  there  was  in  Wilkie's  character,  as  there 
is  in  most   men's,  however  amusing  they  may  be, 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    145 

a  grave  as  well  as  comic  side,  corresponding  with 
the  affectionate  portion  of  it ;  and  this,  very  likely, 
it  was,  that  in  conjunction  with  the  provocation  given 
him  by  Hazlitt,  and  by  jealous  brother  artists,  led 
him  to  attempt  at  higher  subjects,  and  a  deeper 
tone  in  painting.  He  also  appears  to  have  had  a 
delicacy  of  organisation,  tending  to  the  consumptive : 
though  prudence  and  prosperity  kept  him  alive  to 
the  age  of  fifty-six. 

'  Nature  is  vindicated  of  her  children.'  The  sensi- 
bilities of  a  man  of  genius  turn  to  good  account  for 
his  fellow-creatures,  compared  with  whom  he  is  but 
a  unit  Wilkie,  himself,  enjoyed,  as  well  as  suffered  : 
he  had  a  happy  fireside  during  the  greater  part  of 
his  life ;  he  had  always  an  artist's  eye,  which  is  itself 
a  remuneration ;  and  he  knew  that  ages  to  come 
would  find  merit  in  his  productions. 

Turning  northward,  out  of  the  high  road,  between 
Lower  and  Upper  Phillimore  Place,  is  Hornton 
Street,  at  the  further  house  in  which,  on  the  right 
hand,  resided  for  some  years  Doctor  Thomas  Frognall 
Dibdin,  the  sprightliest  of  bibliomaniacs.  He  was 
not  a  mere  bibliomaniac.  He  really  saw,  though  not 
very  far,  into  the  merit  of  the  books  which  he  read. 
He  also  made  some  big  books  of  his  own,  which 
though,  for  the  most  part,  of  little  interest  but  to 
little  antiquaries,  contain  passages  amusing  for  their 
animal  spirits  and  enjoyment  When  the  Doctor 
visited  libraries  on  the  Continent,  he  dined  with  the 
K 


146   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

monks  and  others  who  possessed  them,  and  made 
a  feast-day  of  it  with  the  gaiety  of  his  company. 
When  he  assembled  his  friends  over  a  new  publica- 
tion, or  for  the  purpose  of  inspecting  a  set  of  old 
ones,  the  meeting  was  what  he  delighted  to  call  a 
'  symposium ' ;  that  is  to  say,  they  drank  as  well  as 
ate,  and  were  very  merry  over  old  books,  old  words, 
and  what  they  persuaded  themselves  was  old  wine. 
There  would  have  been  a  great  deal  of  reason  in 
it  all,  if  the  books  had  been  worth  as  much  inside 
as  out ;  but  in  a  question  between  the  finest  of  works 
in  plain  calf,  and  one  of  the  fourth  or  fifth-rate,  old 
and  rare,  and  bound  by  Charles  Lewis,  the  old  book 
would  have  carried  it  hollow.  It  would  even  have 
been  read  with  the  greater  devotion.  However,  the 
mania  was  harmless,  and  helped  to  maintain  a 
proper  curiosity  into  past  ages.  Tom  (for,  though 
a  Reverend,  and  a  Doctor,  we  can  hardly  think  of 
him  seriously),  was  a  good-natured  fellow,  not  very 
dignified  in  any  respect ;  but  he  had  the  rare  merit 
of  being  candid.  A  moderate  sum  of  money  was 
bequeathed  him  by  Douce ;  and  he  said  he  thought 
he  deserved  it,  from  the  '  respectful  attention '  he 
had  always  paid  to  that  not  very  agreeable  gentle- 
man. Tom  was  by  no  means  ill-looking ;  yet 
he  tells  us,  that  being  in  company,  when  he  was 
young,  with  an  elderly  gentleman,  who  knew  his 
father,  and  the  gentleman  being  asked  by  somebody 
whether  the  son  resembled  him,  '  Not  at  all ! '  was 


vo&ttd . . .    ama' 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    147 

the    answer.   '  Captain    Dibdin    was    a    fine-looking 
fellow.' 

This  same  father  was  the  real  glory  of  Tom ;  for 
the  reader  must  know,  that  Captain  Dibdin  was  no 
less  a  person  than  the  '  Tom  Bowling '  of  the  famous 
sea-song : 

'  Here  a  sheer  hulk  lies  poor  Tom  Bowling, 
The  darling  of  our  crew.' 

Captain  Thomas  Dibdin  was  the  brother  of  Charles 
Dibdin,  the  songster  of  the  seamen  ;  and  an  admir- 
able fellow  was  Charles,  and  a  fine  fellow,  in  every 
respect,  the  brother  thus  fondly  recorded  by  him. 
4  No  more '  (continues  the  song,  for  the  reader  will 
not  grudge  us  the  pleasure  of  calling  it  to  mind) — 

'  No  more  he  '11  hear  the  tempest  howling, 
For  death  has  broach'd  him  too. 

His  form  was  of  the  manliest  beauty, 

His  heart  was  kind  and  soft ; 
Faithful  below  he  did  his  duty, 

But  now  he's  gone  aloft.' 

Dr  Dibdin  was  thus  the  nephew  of  a  man  of 
genius,  and  the  son  of  one  of  the  best  specimens 
of  an  Englishman.  His  memory  may  be  content. 

The  Doctor  relates  an  anecdote  of  the  house 
opposite  him,  which  he  considers  equal  to  any 
4  Romance  of  Real  Life.'  This  comes  of  the  anti- 
quarian habit  of  speaking  in  superlatives,  and 
expressing  amazement  at  every  little  thing.  As 
the  circumstance,  however,  is  complete  of  its  kind, 


CHARLES  DIBDIN 


THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB        149 

and  the  kind,  though  not  so  rare,  we  suspect,  as  may 
be  imagined,  is  not  one  of  everyday  occurrence,  it 
may  be  worth  repeating.  A  handsome  widow,  it 
seems,  in  the  prime  of  life,  but  in  reduced  circum- 
stances, and  with  a  family  of  several  children,  had 
been  left  in  possession  of  the  house,  and  desired  to  let 
it.  A  retired  merchant  of  sixty,  who  was  looking 
out  for  a  house  in  Kensington,  came  to  see  it.  He 
fell  in  love  with  the  widow ;  paid  his  addresses  to 
her  on  the  spot,  in  a  respectful  version  of  the  old 
question  put  to  the  fair  showers  of  such  houses, 
('  Are  you,  my  dear,  to  be  let  with  the  lodgings  ? ') ; 
and  after  a  courtship  of  six  months,  was  wedded 
to  the  extemporaneous  object  of  his  affections  at 
Kensington  Church,  the  Doctor  himself  joyfully  offici- 
ating as  clergyman ;  for  the  parties  were  amiable ; 
the  bridegroom  was  a  collector  of  books ;  and  the 
books  were  accompanied  by  a  cellar  full  of  burgundy 
and  champagne. 

Returning  into  the  high  road,  and  continuing  our 
path  on  the  Terrace  side  of  the  way,  we  come  to 
Leonard's  Place,  and  to  Earl's  Court  Terrace,  in 
both  of  which  Mrs  Inchbald  resided  for  some 
months,  in  boarding-houses ;  in  the  former,  at  a 
Mrs  Voysey's ;  in  the  latter,  at  No.  4.  Boarding- 
houses,  though  their  compulsory  hours  of  eating 
and  drinking  did  not  suit  her,  she  found  more 
agreeable  than  other  lodgings,  owing  to  their  supply- 
ing her  with  more  companionship,  and  giving  her 


150   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

more  to  do  for  her  companions.  The  poor  souls  in 
these  places  appear  to  need  it.  Speaking  of  the 
kind  of  hospital  at  Mrs  Voysey's,  in  the  summer 
of  1818,  she  says — 'All  the  old  widows  and  old 
maids  of  this  house  are  stretched  upon  beds  or 
sofas,  with  swollen  legs,  nervous  headaches,  or 
slow  fevers ;  brought  on  by  loss  of  appetite,  broken 
sleep,  and  other  dog-day  complaints ;  while  I  am 
the  only  young  and  strong  person  among  them,  and 
am  called  upon  to  divert  their  blue  devils  from 
bringing  them  to  an  untimely  end.  I  love  to  be 
of  importance ;  and  so  the  present  society  is  flatter- 
ing to  my  vanity.' 

She  was  then  sixty-five.  What  a  god-send  to 
the  poor  creatures  she  must  have  been !  A  woman 
of  genius,  very  entertaining,  full  of  anecdote  and 
old  stories,  and  though  so  young  in  mind,  yet  of 
an  age  bodily  to  keep  them  in  heart  with  them- 
selves, and  so  make  hope  to  live  on. 

At  the  back  of  Earl's  Terrace  was,  and  is,  a 
curious  pretty,  little  spot,  called  Edwardes  Square, 
after  the  family  name  of  Lord  Kensington ;  and 
in  this  Square  Mrs  Inchbald  must  often  have 
walked,  for  the  inhabitants  of  the  Terrace  have 
keys  to  it,  and  it  gives  them  a  kind  of  larger 
garden.  We  have  called  the  spot  curious  as  well 
as  pretty,  and  so  it  is  in  many  respects, — in  one 
of  them  contradictory  to  the  prettiness,  for  one  side 
of  the  Square  is  formed  of  the  backs  and  garden- 


152   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

walls  of  the  Earl's  Terrace  houses,  and  the  opposite 
side  of  it  coach-houses,  and  of  little  tenements  that 
appear  to  have  been  made  out  of  them.  The  whole 
of  this  latter  side,  however,  is  plastered,  and  partly 
overgrown  with  ivy,  so  as  to  be  rather  an  ornament 
than  an  eyesore.  But  what  chiefly  surprises  the 
spectator,  when  he  first  sees  the  place,  is  the  large- 
ness, as  well  as  cultivated  look  of  the  square, 
compared  with  the  smallness  of  the  houses  on  two 
sides  of  it.  The  gardener's  lodge,  also,  is  made 
to  look  like  a  Grecian  temple,  really  in  good  taste ; 
and  though  the  grass  is  not  as  thick  and  soft  as  it 
might  be,  nor  the  flowers  as  various,  and  pathways 
across  the  grass  had  better  have  been  straight  than 
winding  (there  being  no  inequalities  of  ground  to 
render  the  winding  natural),  yet,  upon  the  whole, 
there  is  such  an  unexpected  air  of  size,  greenness, 
and  even  elegance  in  the  place,  especially  when 
its  abundant  lilacs  are  in  blossom,  and  ladies  are 
seen  on  its  benches  reading,  that  the  stroller,  who 
happens  to  turn  out  of  the  road,  and  comes  upon 
the  fresh-looking  sequestered  spot  for  the  first  time, 
is  interested  as  well  as  surprised,  and  feels  curious 
to  know  how  a  square  of  any  kind,  comparatively 
so  large,  and,  at  the  same  time,  manifestly  so  cheap 
(for  the  houses,  though  neat  and  respectable,  are 
too  small  to  be  dear),  could  have  suggested  itself 
to  the  costly  English  mind.  Upon  inquiry,  he 
finds  it  to  have  been  the  work  of  a  Frenchman. 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    153 

The  story  is,  that  the  Frenchman  built  it  at  the 
time  of  the  threatened  invasion  from  France ;  and 
that  he  adapted  the  large  square  and  the  cheap 
little  houses  to  the  promenading  tastes  and  poorly- 
furnished  pockets  of  the  ensigns  and  lieutenants  of 
Napoleon's  army ;  who,  according  to  his  speculation, 
would  certainly  have  been  on  the  lookout  for  some 
such  place,  and  here  would  have  found  it.  Here, 
thought  he,  shall  be  cheap  lodging  and  fete  champetre 
combined ;  here,  economy  in-doors,  and  Watteau 
without ;  here,  repose  after  victory ;  promenades ; 
la  belle  passion  ;  perusal  of  newspapers  on  benches ; 
an  ordinary  at  the  Holland  Arms, — a  French 
Arcadia  in  short,  or  a  little  Palais  Royal,  in  an 
English  suburb.  So  runs  the  tradition ;  we  do 
not  say  how  truly,  though  it  could  hardly  have 
entered  an  English  head  to  invent  it. 

It  was  allowable  for  French  imaginations  in  those 
days  to  run  a  little  wild,  on  the  strength  of 
Napoleon's  victories.  We  do  not  repeat  the  story 
for  the  sake  of  saying  how  wild.  We  believe 
that  both  Frenchmen  and  Englishmen,  at  present, 
for  reasons  best  known  to  all  Governments,  not 
actually  out  of  their  senses,  are  for  keeping  to  their 
localities  as  peaceably  and  regularly  as  possible ; 
and  we  devoutly  hope  they  may  continue  to  do 
so,  not  only  for  the  sake  of  the  two  greatest 
nations  in  Europe,  but  for  that  of  the  security  of 
advancement  For  it  is  better  to  advance  gently, 


154   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

however  slowly,  than  to  be  incessantly  thrown  back 
from  one  extreme  to  another ;  and  the  world  and 
right  opinion  will  progress  as  surely  as  time  does, 
whatever  efforts  despots  and  bigots  may  make  to 
put  back  the  clock. 

It  is  said,  in  Kensington,  that  Coleridge  once  had 
lodgings  in  Edwardes  Square.  We  do  not  find 
the  circumstance  in  his  biographies,  though  he  once 
lived  in  the  neighbouring  village  of  Hammersmith. 
Perhaps,  he  was  on  a  visit  to  a  friend ;  for  we  are 
credibly  informed,  that  he  used  to  be  seen  walking 
in  the  square.  A  lady,  who  was  a  child  at  the 
time,  is  very  proud  of  his  having  spoken  to  her, 
and  given  her  a  kiss. 


S.  T.   COLERIDGE 


CHAPTER  TWELVE 

HOLLAND  HOUSE  is  the  only  important  mansion, 
venerable  for  age  and  appearance,  which  is  now  to 
be  found  in  the  neighbourhood  of  London.  There 
has  been  talk  more  than  once  of  pulling  it  down ; 
but  every  feeling  of  memory  seems  to  start  up  at 
the  threat,  and  cry,  No,  No !  The  cry  is  not 
only  one  of  the  utmost  parliamentary  propriety : 
the  weight  of  the  whole  voice  of  the  metropolis 
may  be  said  to  be  in  it;  nay,  of  the  nation  itself; 
and  even  of  the  civilised  world ;  for  what  court 
or  diplomatist  that  knows  of  the  '  Whigs,'  knows 
not  of  '  Holland  House '  ?  or  what  foreigner,  with 
any  taste  for  English  wit  and  localities,  visits 
London  without  going  to  see  it  ?  It  is  not  hand- 
some ;  it  is  not  ancient ;  but  it  is  of  an  age 
sufficient  to  make  up  for  want  of  beauty  ;  it  shows 
us  how  our  ancestors  built  before  Shakspeare  died  ; 
a  crowd  of  the  reigning  wits  and  beauties  of  that, 
and  every  succeeding  generation,  passes  through 
it  to  the  '  mind's  ^eye,'  brilliant  with  life  and  colour ; 
and  there  it  stands  yet,  on  its  old  rising  ground, 

156 


THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

with  its  proper  accompaniment  of  sward 
and  trees,  to  gratify  everybody  that  can 
appreciate    it,  and  shame  any  one  that 
would  do  it  wrong. 
May    it    everlast- 
ingly be  repaired, 
and     never    look 
otherwise     than 
past  times  beheld 
it. 

The  upper  apart- 
ments of  Holland 
House  are  on  a 
level  with  the 
stone  gallery  of 
the  dome  of  St 
Paul's.  Their 
front  windows 
command  a  view  «  *• 

of  the    Surrey   hills ;    as  those   of  the  back  do   of 
Harrow,  Hampstead,  and  Highgate. 

When  this  interesting  old  mansion  came  into  the 
possession  of  the  present  lord,  seeing  the  masons 
at  work,  and  finding  one  of  the  approaches  to  it 
stopped  up,  we  trembled  at  what  he  might  be 
going  to  do  with  it.  That  approach  was  called 
Nightingale  Lane,  and  had  long,  been  a  favourite 
with  the  Kensingtonians ;  for  besides  enabling 
them  to  get  closer  to  the  nightingales,  it  afforded 


\-  •£»£»  'S*i*5r 

-••^rfWSiPr 

.^c 

•••'*'  »>">i'r'-r,    ,.-    . 
-   v^V^t/ 


158   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

them  a  passage  right  in  front  of  the  house.  This 
passage  was  now  closed  ;  a  parapet  wall  was  taking 
the  place  of  it ;  two  stone  piers,  designed  by  Inigo 
Jones,  disappeared  from  the  courtyard  ;  and  every- 
thing looked  as  if  the  appearance  of  the  house  itself 
was  about  to  be  altered. 

The  alarm,  however,  proved  false.  The  house, 
externally,  remained  untouched ;  and  when  the 
stone  piers,  not  very  intelligible  in  their  previous 
distance  from  one  another,  were  found  composing 
a  gate  at  the  side  of  it,  and  vases  of  geraniums 
made  their  appearance  on  the  parapet  wall,  and 
orange  trees  came  in  front  of  the  geraniums,  and 
the  shut-up  lane  was  compounded  for  by  a  new 
one,  which,  though  it  led  only  by  a  side  of  the 
house,  opened  a  more  convenient  passage  to 
Netting  Hill,  and  was  furnished,  moreover,  with 
a  bench  like  those  in  the  parks,  to  give  a  resting- 
place  to  passengers  themselves  (persons  not  too 
often  cared  for  in  aristocratical  changes),  the  alter- 
ations, though  producing  an  effect  perhaps  not 
thoroughly  harmonious  between  the  northern 
architecture  and  its  southern  accompaniments, 
could  not  but  be  acknowledged  to  be  improve- 
ments in  the  main,  and  to  have  rendered  the 
entire  spot  more  remarkable  and  attractive. 

The  aged  look  of  the  exterior  of  Holland  House 
is  the  more  precious  to  the  antiquary,  inasmuch 
as  with  the  exception  of  a  staircase  or  so,  it  is 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    159 

the  only  part  of  its  antiquity  remaining.  The 
interior  has  long  been  so  modernised,  that  a  lover 
of  old  times  is  grieved  to  find  not  a  single  room 
in  it  which  brings  them  before  him.  There  is  little 
which  is  older  than  the  youth  of  the  late  lord, 
and  much  that  has  been  further  modernised  by  the 
present.  The  fact  is,  that  the  house  had  become 
so  neglected  during  the  nonage  of  the  former,  in 
consequence  of  the  reckless  expenditures  of  the 
first  lord  and  his  son  Charles  (the  great  Whig 
leader),  that  there  was  talk  of  converting  it  into 
a  workhouse.  Lord  Holland,  a  respecter  of  old 
associations,  and  of  the  pleasures  of  other  people, 
saved  it ;  and  this  circumstance  should  be  counted 
among  the  claims  to  respect  of  his  own  genial 
memory. 

The  lodge,  which  the  new  lord  has  renovated 
and  doubled,  is  in  a  style  suitable  to  the  mansion ; 
with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  the  two  footway 
entrances,  which  look  a  little  flimsy.  The  reten- 
tion of  the  gilding  on  the  iron  gates  may  be 
objected  to  by  some,  as  partaking  of  the  same 
character ;  but  we  think  otherwise.  The  gilding 
is  but  partial ;  it  relieves  (to  our  eyes)  the  sombre- 
ness  of  the  iron ;  and,  being  confined  to  the 
ornamental  portion  of  the  work,  gives  it  a  kind  of 
golden  efflorescence.  We  have  not  enough  of  this 
kind  of  work  in  England  ;  do  not  sufficiently  avail 
ourselves  of  the  bright  lights  and  colours  that  we 


160   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

might  bring  to  bear  on  our  sombre  climate.  To 
see,  on  a  dark,  wet,  muddy  day,  all  the  people 
going  along  in  dark  or  brown  colours,  everything 
looking  dingy  or  insipid — the  houses  insipid,  the 
carts  and  wagons  insipid,  most  of  the  carriages 
equally  so,  and  the  faces  either  to  match  or  full 
of  care,  the  circumstances  all  seem  to  conspire 
with  the  weather  to  cut  as  miserable  an  appearance 
as  possible ;  as  though  the  passengers  were  tacitly 
saying, 

'  Let  us  all  be  unhappy  together.' 

We  are  aware  that  there  is  a  'harmony'  in  the 
spectacle ;  but  it  is  a  wretched  harmony ;  and  we 
think  a  little  cheerful  discord  would  be  bet  -r. 
Nobody  objects  to  a  rainbow.  Flowers,  protected 
by  verandahs  in  balconies,  are  welcome  to  the  eyes 
in  any  weather.  There  are  colours  that  suit  dark- 
ness ;  and  a  good  diffusion  of  them  at  such  times 
would  be  a  god-send.  For  our  parts,  we  always 
feel  grateful  on  a  rainy  day,  when  we  see  a  market 
woman  go  by  in  a  red  cloak. 

Of  the  lawn,  or  rather  meadow,  which  lies  in  front 
of  Holland  House,  there  is  a  tradition  that  Cromwell 
and  Ireton  conferred  in  it,  as  a  place  in  which  they 
could  not  be  overheard.  From  circumstances  here- 
after to  be  noticed,  the  tradition  is  probable.  It 
shows  that  whatever  the  subject  of  the  conference 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    161 

may  have  been,  they  could  not  have  objected  to 
being  seen ;  for  there  was  neither  wall,  nor  even 
trees,  we  believe,  at  that  time  in  front  of  the  house, 
as  there  is  now ;  and  we  may  fancy  royalists  riding 
by,  on  their  road  to  Brentford,  where  the  king's 
forces  were  defeated,  and  trembling  to  see  the  two 
grim  republicans  laying  their  heads  together. 

The  grounds  at  the  back  of  the  house  are  more 
extensive  than  might  be  supposed,  and  contain 
many  fine  old  trees  of  various  kinds,  with  spots  of 
charming  seclusion.  The  portion  nearest  the  house 
presents  an  expanse  of  turf  of  the  most  luxurious 
description,  with  a  most  noble  elm-tree  upon  it, 
and  an  alcove  facing  the  west,  in  which  there  is  a 
couplet  that  was  put  up  by  the  late  lord  in  honour 
of  Mr  Rogers,  and  a  copy  of  verses  by  Mr  Luttrell, 
expressing  his  inability  to  emulate  the  poet.  The 
couplet  is  as  follows : — 

4  Here  Rogers  sat,  and  here  for  ever  dwell, 
To  me,  those  pleasures  that  he  sang  so  well.' 

VLL.  HD. 

Inscriptions  challenge  comments ;  brief  ones,  it 
is  thought,  ought  in  particular  to  be  faultless  ;  seats 
in  summer  time,  and  loungings  about  on  luxurious 
turfs  (half-an-hour  before  dinner),  beget  the  most 
exacting  criticisms ;  and  thus  a  nice  question  has 
arisen,  whether  the  relative  pronoun  in  this  couplet 
ought  to  be  that  or  which.  Our  first  impression  was 
L 


1 62        THE  OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

in  favour  of  that;  but  happening  to  repeat  the 
lines  next  morning  while  in  the  act  of  waking,  we 
involuntarily  said  which ;  upon  which  side  of  the 
question  we  are  accordingly  prepared  to  fight, 
with  all  the  inveteracy  of  deserters  from  the  other. 
Lord  Holland's  couplet  is  in  the  simple  and 
tranquil  taste  which  he  had  so  much  right  to  ad- 
mire ;  Mr  Luttrell's  verses,  which  are  a  score  longer, 
would  have  been  improved  by  compression.  They 
are  a  sample  of  the  difference  which  they  themselves 
speak  of,  between  natural  and  artificial  writing,  or 
that  which  is  prompted  by  what  is  felt,  and  that 
which  would  emulate  the  expression  of  others. 
The  old  eighteenth  -  century  fashion  of  rhyming 
with  its  '  heart  and  impart,  rove,  grove,'  etc.,  is 
here  (literally)  in  all  its  glory.  But  see  how 
pleasant  and  readable  are  one  or  two  natural  ex- 
pressions : 


'Well,  now  I  am  fairly  installed  in  the  bower, 
How  lovely  the  scene  !  how  propitious  the  hour ! 
The  breeze  is  perfumed,  from  the  hawthorn  it  stirs 
All  is  silent  around  me — but  nothing  occurs  ; 
Not  a  thought,  I  protest,  though  I'm  here  and  alone  ; 
Not  a  chance  of  a  couplet  that  Rogers  would  own  ; 
Though  my  senses  are  raptur'd,  my  feelings  in  tune, 
And  Holland's  my  host,  and  the  season  is  June. 

So  I  rise,  since  the  Muses  continue  to  frown, 
No  more  of  a  poet  than  when  I  sat  down.' 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB   163 

Beyond  this  mossy  lawn  is  the  open  undulating 
ground,  terminated  by  the  Uxbridge  Road,  with 
which  the  public  have  become  acquainted  by  means 
of  the  Highland  Pastimes ;  all  round  the  grounds 
is  a  rustic  lane,  furnishing  a  long  leafy  walk  ;  on 
the  western  side  of  the  house  are  small  gardens, 
both  in  new  and  old  styles,  the  work  of  the  late 
Lady  Holland,  and  the  latter  very  properly  retained, 
both  as  a  variety  from  the  former,  and  as  a  fitting 
accompaniment  to  the  old  house.  It  is  also  pleas- 
ant to  fancy  in  what  sort  of  way  our  grandmothers 
and  great-grandmothers,  the  Chloes  and  Delias  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  enjoyed  their  flower  -  beds. 
In  one  of  these  gardens  was  raised  the  first  specimen 
of  that  beautiful  flower,  the  dahlia,  which  the  late 
Lord  Holland  is  understood  to  have  brought  from 
Spain  ;  in  another,  on  a  pedestal,  is  a  colossal  bust 
of  Napoleon,  by  a  pupil  of  Canova ;  further  west, 
towards  the  Addison  Road,  are  the  Moats ;  which 
(to  say  nothing  of  the  evidence  furnished  by  an 
apocryphal  bit  of  brickwork  that  accompanies  them) 
are  looked  upon  as  the  site  of  the  older  mansion 
belonging  to  the  De  Veres  ;  and  further  still,  a  few 
years  ago,  was  an  expiatory  classical  altar,  erected 
by  the  same  lord,  in  memory  of  the  fate  of  poor 
Lord  Camelford,  a  man  half  out  of  his  wits,  who 
was  killed  on  this  spot  in  a  duel  which  he  insisted 
on  provoking.  We  know  not  why  it  was  removed  ; 
probably  to  efface  the  melancholy  impression. 


1  64        THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

The  bust  of  Napoleon  is  inscribed  with  a  felicitous 
quotation  from  Homer  : 

Ov  Y*P  *""«  T£8vt]K£V  tiri  \9ovi  8105  OSvororcus, 
AXX'  tri  irov  £«os  KarepvKtrai  evpa  ITOVTW, 
cv  afKJnpvTT]'  ^aXciroi  8«  p.iv  avSpts 


'  Which  '  (says  the  person  who  is  speaking  on  the 
passage  in  Mr  Faulkner's  '  History  of  Kensington,' 
and  whom  we  take  to  have  been  the  late  Lord 
Holland  himself)  '  I  have  seen  somewhere  translated 
thus  : 

'  He  is  not  dead  ;  he  breathes  the  air 

In  lands  beyond  the  deep  ! 
Some  distant  sea-girt  island,  where 
Harsh  men  the  hero  keep.' 

The  translation  is  probably  his  lordship's  own.* 
Upon  this  inscription  it  may  be  observed,  that  harsh 
men  certainly  had  the  keeping  of  the  hero  ;  who  had 
been,  however,  a  harsh  man  himself,  and  kept 
thousands  of  men  in  worse  durance.  But  his  keepers 
were  not  only  harsh  ;  they  were  mean  and  shabby  ; 
refused  him  a  title  in  his  adversity,  which  they  were 
prepared  to  acknowledge  had  he  consented  to  their 
terms,  when  they  doubted  the  issue  of  the  contest  ; 
and  they  suffered  him  to  be  worried  by  a  set  of 
men  incapable  of  understanding  him,  except  as 

*  The  account  of  Holland  House  in  Faulkner's  book  is  written  in  a 
style  wholly  different  from  the  rest  of  it  ;  and  instead  of  being  used  as 
the  writer  must  have  intended,  betrays  other  evidences  of  having  been 
clumsily  taken  into  its  pages  in  the  lump. 


- 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 


165 


jailers.  It  was  the  revenge  of  long-defeated  dulness 
upon  fallen  genius,  and  is  a  blot  in  the  history  of 
England's  greatness. 

The  altar  in  memory  of  Lord  Camelford  was  an 
ancient  Roman  one,  erected  on  a  modern  base,  and 
was  inscribed  with  a  propitiatory  dedication  to  de- 
parted souls,  or  the  gods  who  preside  over  places  of 
the  dead — a  curious  instance  of  classical  '  making  as 
if — of  playing  at  Paganism  on  so  serious  an  occasion. 
It  was  quite,  however,  in  the  taste  of  the  last  century, 
and  was  a  local  relief  to  the  imagination. 

'  Hoc  Diis  Manibus  Voto  Dis-  ', 

cordiam  Deprecamur.'  .  - , 

(Thus  devoutly  honouring  the  Dii 
Manes  we  deprecate  dissen- 
sion.) 

Lord  Camel  ford's  body, 
however,  is  not  here.  With 
the  passion  for  going  to 
extremes,  which  character- 
ised him,  he  directed  that 
it  should  be  buried  under 
a  tree  in  a  solitary  spot  in 
Switzerland,  which  had  in- 
terested him  during  his 
travels.  He  was  a  Pitt, 
nephew  to  the  great  Earl 
of  Chatham,  who  wrote  him 
letters  when  a  boy,  that  show 


1 66        THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

how  little  sometimes  can  be  done  in  directing  the  future 
career  even  of  a  child  otherwise  intelligent,  who  has 
been  born,  from  whatever  cause,  with  a  certain  wild- 
ness  in  his  blood.  The  poor  youth,  who  came  to 
his  end  before  he  was  thirty,  was  wildness  itself  in 


/.xl  Ce-mdCn}  «</>< 


many  respects,  though  he  was  fond  of  serious  studies. 
His  manners  were  perfect  at  times,  but  at  others 
would  burst  out  into  arrogance  and  insolence.  He 
was  a  Christian,  it  is  said,  upon  conviction,  and  yet 
could  quarrel  with  a  man  about  a  prostitute,  and 
insist  upon  fighting  him,  notwithstanding  all  that 
could  be  done  to  adjust  the  difference.  The  reason 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    167 

he  gave  was,  that  his  antagonist  was  too  good  a 
shot  to  make  it  up  with.  The  antagonist  was  a 
Mr  Best.  Lord  Camelford  went  up  to  him  in 
Stevens's  Hotel  in  Bond  Street,  and  addressed  him 
in  the  following  placid  words :  '  Mr  Best,  I  am  glad 
to  see  you  face  to  face,  and  to  tell  you  you  are  an 
infamous  scoundrel.'  He  afterwards  confessed,  like 
a  gentleman,  that  he  had  been  the  aggressor. 

But  an  old  house  is  not  perfect  without  a  ghost, 
and  Holland  House  has  two.  They  do  not  indeed 
haunt  it,  and  were  very  transient  in  their  appearance  ; 
but  they  will  serve  to  give  a  bit  of  ghostly  interest 
to  the  spot,  for  those  whose  imaginations  like  to 
'  catch  a  fearful  joy '  on  such  points.  The  account  is 
in  Aubrey's  '  Miscellanies,'  which  were  written  in  the 
reign  of  William  the  Third. 

'  The  beautiful  Lady  Diana  Rich,  daughter  to  the 
Earl  of  Holland,  as  she  was  walking  in  her  father's 
garden  at  Kensington,  to  take  the  fresh  air  before 
dinner,  about  eleven  o'clock,  being  then  very  well, 
met  with  her  own  apparition,  habit  and  everything, 
as  in  a  looking-glass.  About  a  month  after,  she 
died  of  the  small-pox.  And  it  is  said,  that  her  sister, 
the  Lady  Isabella  Thynne,  saw  the  like  of  herself 
also,  before  she  died.  This  account  I  had  from  a 
person  of  honour.' 

Aubrey,  though  his  gossip  is  valuable  to  a  lover 
of  books,  was  credulous  to  excess.  It  is  impossible, 
however,  to  say  what  visions  may  not  be  seen  by 


1 68        THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB 

people  in  bad  states  of  health — what  actual  images 
the  imagination,  in  certain  morbid  states  of  the  brain, 
may  not  bring  before  the  eye.  Nicolai,  the  German 
bookseller,  was  in  the  habit  of  seeing  spectral  men 
and  women  pass  through  his  room  ;  and  a  sick  young 
lady,  just  dressed  for  dinner,  and  full  of  thought  of 
herself,  sickly  or  otherwise,  might  as  well  see  her 
own  image  as  that  of  any  one  else. 

The  Lady  Isabella  Thynne,  here  mentioned,  wife 
of  one  of  the  ancestors  of  the  Marquis  of  Bath,  is 
mentioned  in  another  of  Aubrey's  books  (the  '  Lives 
and  Letters  of  Eminent  Men')  as  addicted  to  any- 
thing but  ghostly  communications.  She  and  a  friend 
of  hers,  he  says,  while  on  a  visit  to  Oxford,  used 
to  -come  to  morning  prayers  at  Trinity  College 
Chapel,  'half-dressed,  like  angels.'  She  would  also 
make  her  entrance  upon  the  college  walks,  with  a 
'  lute  playing  before  her ' ;  and  must  have  been  a 
great  puzzle  to  the  college  ethics,  for  she  is  described 
as  possessing  all  kinds  of  virtues  but  one.  She  is 
the  '  Lady  Isabella '  whose  playing  on  the  lute  is 
recorded  in  a  set  of  complimentary  verses  by  Waller : 

'The  trembling  strings  about  her  fingers  crowd, 
And  tell  their  joy  for  every  kiss  aloud ; 
Small  force  there  needs  to  make  them  tremble  so ; 
Touch'd  by  that  hand,  who  would  not  tremble,  too?' 

We  think  we  have  read  somewhere,  but  cannot 
call  to  mind  in  what  book,  that  she  suffered  a  good 
deal  of  affliction  before  she  died. 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB        169 

So  much  for  Holland  House  and  its  grounds,  as 
the  latter  appear  at  present,  and  the  former  has  con- 
tinued to  look  for  many  generations.  We  now  pro- 
ceed to  its  interior,  to  its  inmates,  and  to  those  who 
went  before  them  in  the  possession  of  the  estate ; 
that  is  to  say,  the  possessors  of  the  older  house 
which  is  now  gone,  as  well  as  those  which  have 
occupied  the  one  before  us. 


CHAPTER  THIRTEEN 

WE  have  observed  and  regretted,  that  the  interior 
of  Holland  House  has  been  so  modernised,  as,  with 
little  exception,  to  retain  no  appearance  of  the 
antiquity  to  be  expected  from  its  appearance  out- 
side. We  found,  nevertheless,  so  much  to  interest 
us  in  it  (the  conversation  included  of  the  gallant 
kinsman  of  the  family,  who  was  so  kind  as  to  do  us 
the  honour  of  being  our  cicerone),  that,  as  is  too 
often  the  case  with  something  one  is  bent  upon 
recollecting,  we  forgot  to  ask  for  the  chamber  in 
which  Addison  died.  We  believe,  however,  it  is 
among  the  few  apartments  that  are  not  shown. 
Among  those  which  are,  is  Charles  Fox's  bedroom  ; 
that  of  Mr  Rogers  (a  frequent  visitor),  with  a  poet's 
view  over  the  country  towards  Harrow ;  and  that 
of  Sheridan,  in  the  next  room  to  which  a  servant 
was  regularly  in  attendance  all  night ;  partly  to 
furnish,  we  believe,  a  bottle  of  champagne  to  the 
thirsty  orator  in  case  he  should  happen  to  call  for 
one  betwixt  his  slumbers  (at  least  we  heard  so  a 
long  while  ago,  and  it  was  quite  in  keeping  with  his 

170 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB        171 

noble  host's  hospitality  ;  but  we  forgot  to  verify  the 
anecdote  on  this  occasion)  and  partly  (of  this  there 
is  no  doubt)  to  secure  the  bed  curtains  from  being 
set  on  fire  by  his  candle. 

A  pleasanter  apartment  to  contemplate,  is  the  one 
in  which  Lord  Holland  used  to  hear  his  children  say 
their  lessons,  and  induct  them  into  the  beauties  of 
Spenser — an  unexpected  trait  in  the  predilections  of 
a  man  of  letters  brought  up  in  the  town  tastes  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  But  his  uncle  Charles  was  fond 
of  Spenser ;  and  so  was  Burke,  and  the  great  Earl 
of  Chatham.  It  is  difficult  to  hinder  great  men 
from  discerning  the  merits  of  greatness.  The  poetry 
of  Spenser  was  to  their  other  books  what  their  parks 
and  retirements  were  to  the  town  itself. 

The  library  must  originally  have  been  a  green- 
house or  conservatory ;  for,  in  its  first  condition,  it 
appears  to  have  been  scarcely  anything  but  windows  ; 
and  it  is  upwards  of  ninety  feet  long,  by  only 
seventeen  feet  four  inches  wide,  and  fourteen  feet 
seven  inches  in  height.  The  moment  one  enters  it, 
one  looks  at  the  two  ends,  and  thinks  of  the  tradition 
about  Addison's  pacings  in  it  to  and  fro.  It  repre- 
sents him  as  meditating  his  '  Spectators '  between 
two  bottles  of  wine,  and  comforting  his  ethics  by 
taking  a  glass  of  each,  as  he  arrived  at  each  end  of 
the  room.  The  regularity  of  this  procedure  is,  of 
course,  a  jest ;  but  the  main  circumstance  is  not 
improbable,  though  Lord  Holland  seems  to  have 


172   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

thought  otherwise.  He  says  (for  the  words  in 
Faulkner's  Kensington  are  evidently  his) :  '  Fancy 
may  trace  the  exquisite  humour  which  enlivens  his 
papers  to  the  mirth  inspired  by  wine ;  but  there  is 
too  much  sober,  good  sense  in  all  his  lucubrations, 
even  when  he  indulges  most  in  pleasantry,  to  allow 
us  to  give  implicit  credit  to  a  tradition  invented, 
probably,  as  excuse  for  intemperance  by  such  as 
can  empty  two  bottles  of  wine,  but  never  produce 
a  "  Spectator  "  or  a  "  Freeholder." '  We  shall  return 
to  Addison's  alleged  habit  of  drinking  by-and-by. 

The  first  Lord  Holland  made  a  family  portrait- 
gallery  of  this  room  ;  and  the  accumulated  books  of 
the  late  Lord  forced  the  pictures  into  other  apart- 
ments, though  still  he  put  many  portraits  above 
them,  of  friends,  kinsfolk,  and  deceased  men  of 
letters,  with  Addison  at  their  head.  When  we  lately 
saw  the  room,  there  were  no  pictures  at  all ;  and 
the  ceiling  had  been  converted  into  a  starry  firma- 
ment ;  hardly,  perhaps,  the  most  suitable  thing, 
either  to  the  ceiling  itself,  which  is  full  of  concavities, 
or  to  the  winter's  enjoyment  of  a  book  by  the  fire- 
side. But  the  alterations  of  the  house,  we  believe, 
are  not  yet  final ;  and  everybody  surely  would  miss 
the  presence  of  Addison. 

The  collection  of  books  is  celebrated  for  its  abund- 
ance of  Italian  and  Spanish  authors,  the  former  in 
particular.  Among  the  curiosities  in  other  languages 
are  an  '  Editio  Princeps '  of  Homer,  which  belonged 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB        173 

to  Fox  ;  a  copy  of  the  same  poet  belonging  to  Sir 
Isaac  Newton,  with  a  distich  in  his  handwriting  on 
the  fly-leaf;  and  a  singularly  interesting  one  of 
Camoens,  which  it  is  alleged  must  have  been  in  the 
hands  of  the  poet  himself.  At  the  bottom  of  the 
title-page  is  a  painful  corroboration  of  the  statements 
respecting  his  end.  It  is  a  manuscript  note  in  an 
old  Spanish  hand,  stating  that  the  writer  'saw  him 
die  in  a  hospital,  without  even  a  blanket  to  cover 
him.'  'He  did  this,' 
says  he,  'after  having 
triumphed  in  the  East 
(Camoens  served  in 
various  expeditions) 
and  traversed  five  thou- 
sand five  hundred 
leagues  of  ocean  :  and 
all  for  what,  but  to 
study  day  and  night  to 
no  better  purpose  than 
spiders  to  catch  flies  ? ' 
A  natural  question 
enough  to  the  first  im- 
pulse of  indignation. 
And  the  blush  of  Por- 
tugal at  the  fate  of 
Camoens  ought  to  be 
as  great  and  lasting,  as 
the  glory  with  which 


***& 


174   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

he  has  covered  her.  But  the  death  of  a  man  is 
not  his  life ;  nor  must  the  struggles  of  a  poet  make 
us  forget  his  enjoyments.  Camoens  triumphed 
with  his  fellow-soldiers ;  was  long  the  admira- 
tion of  the  circles  in  which  he  moved ;  knew 
the  glory  which  awaited  his  name ;  and  above  all, 
must  have  so  loved  and  enjoyed  his  gift  of  poetry, 
that  in  all  probability,  during  the  far  greater  part 
of  his  life,  he  would  not  have  changed  lots  with  the 
most  prosperous  man  in  his  country.  His  end, 
indeed,  is  most  pitiable,  enough  to  bring  tears  into 
the  eyes  of  the  gallantest  fellow-soldier.  It  is  said, 
that  before  he  was  taken  to  the  hospital,  a  faithful 
servant  used  actually  to  go  out  and  beg  for  him.  It 
requires  all  the  good  and  all  the  pleasure  given  to 
the  world  by  such  men's  productions,  to  enable  us 
to  think  of  their  sufferings  with  patience.  But  it 
does  enable  us.  The  ways  of  Providence  are  vindi- 
cated. The  fine  heart  is  broken  ;  but  the  earth,  to 
all  time,  is  filled  with  its  fragrance. 

There  are  several  curious  manuscripts  in  the  library, 
particularly  three  autograph  letters  of  Petrarch,  three 
autograph  plays  of  Lope  de  Vega,  the  original  copy 
of  a  play  of  the  younger  Moratin,  and  the  music  of 
Metastasio's  '  Olimpiade '  beautifully  written  out  by 
Jean  Jacques  Rousseau,  at  the  time  when  that '  shaker 
of  the  thrones  of  Europe '  got  his  livelihood  by  work 
of  that  kind. 

It  is  by  no  means  the  least  interesting   circum- 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    175 

stance  connected  with  this  library,  that  Lord  Holland, 
its  collector,  really  enjoyed  his  books.  The  reader 
might  guess  as  much  from  the  nature  of  them  ;  and 
we  shall  have  reasons  for  being  assured  of  it  as  we 
go.  At  present,  we  have  more  to  do  with  the  house 
than  with  its  possessors. 

The  collection  of  pictures  is  not  remarkable,  except 
as  containing  a  greater  number  of  portraits  of  men 
of  letters,  Italians  in  particular,  than  is  to  be  found 
perhaps  in  any  other  private  abode.  Among  them 
is  Addison,  when  he  was  young  (a  handsome  face) ; 
Alfieri  (in  miniature),  the  Italian  tragic  poet,  who  was 
some  time  in  England  ;  his  wife  (another  miniature) ; 
the  Countess  of  Albany,  widow  of  the  Pretender  (a 
princess  of  the  house  of  Stolberg) ;  Sir  Philip  Francis  ; 
Robespierre  (miniature),  with  his  pert,  insignificant 
look,  on  which  nobody  would  have  guessed  that  so 
much  tragedy  was  hanging ;  Jerome  Bonaparte  (a 
narrow-minded,  repulsive  countenance) ;  two  portraits, 
large  and  small,  if  we  mistake  not,  of  the  Duchess 
of  Portsmouth  (Louise  de  Querouaille,  Charles  the 
Second's  mistress),  quite  making  out,  in  one  of  them, 
the  '  baby  face '  of  which  Evelyn  accuses  her,  nobody 
would  have  taken  her  for  an  ancestress  of  the  manly- 
visaged  Foxes ;  many  portraits  of  the  rest  of  the 
family ;  a  fine  one  of  Talleyrand,  by  Schetter ;  and 
one,  by  Gerard,  of  Napoleon  at  Fontainebleau. 

There  are  also  busts  of  Napoleon,  of  Machiavel, 
and  of  Henry  the  Fourth,  the  last  '  looking  like  a 


176   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

goat ' ;  a  curious  painting  by  Sir  Joshua  (of  which 
more  by-and-by),  consisting  of  whole-length  portraits 
of  Charles  Fox,  when  a  youth,  with  his  fair  relatives, 
Lady  Sarah  Lennox  and  Lady  Susan  Strangeways  ; 

and  another,  by  Ho- 
garth, representing 
Dryden's  play  of  the 
'  Indian  Emperor,' 
performed  by  chil- 
dren, one  of  whom  is 
a  grand-niece  of  Sir 
Isaac  Newton,  whose 
bustisonthe  chimney- 
piece.  The  play  was 
performed  for  the 
amusement  of  the 
Duke  of  Cumberland, 
who  is  seated  accord- 
ingly ;  and  the  gover- 
ness playing  with  one 
of  the  children  is 
Lady  Deloraine, 
whom  the  reader  will 
find  acting  a  more 
5"  curious  part,  when  we 
come,  in  these  Ken- 
sington memorabilia, 
to  the  Palace. 


^_  /nn 


nduj  ond 


CHAPTER  FOURTEEN 

WE  now  come,  not  only  to  the  possessors  of  the 
present  house,  but  to  those  of  the  one  that  preceded 
it ;  and  therefore  must  go  a  good  way  back,  before 
we  return  to  the  Foxes. 

We  have  seen,  in  a  former  chapter,  that,  with  the 
exception  of  an  Anglo-Saxon  in  the  time  of  Edward 
the  Confessor,  of  whom  nothing  further  is  mentioned, 
and  of  the  Bishop  of  Coutances,  to  whom  William 
the  Conqueror  gave  it  with  power  to  alienate ;  the 
De  Veres,  Earls  of  Oxford,  were  the  earliest  recorded 
possessors  of  the  manor  of  Kensington,  and  seated 
probably  on  the  spot  in  question.  It  is  not  ascer- 
tained that  such  was  the  case ;  but  as  the  property 
was  valuable,  was  convenient  for  its  neighbourhood 
to  London,  and  seems  to  be  implied  as  residential 
in  the  name  of  the  adjoining  locality,  Earl's  Court 
that  is  to  say,  the  court  for  administering  the  Earl's 
property  or  jurisdiction,  it  is  extremely  improbable, 
that  none  of  the  family  ever  occupied  it.  It  was 
associated  with  their  name  from  the  time  of 
William  the  Conqueror  to  that  of  James  the  First. 
M  i77 


t;8        THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB 

Aubrey  de  Vere,  its  first  holder  under  the  Bishop, 
must  needs  have  visited  his  property  some  time  or 
other,  or  for  what  did  he  come  with  the  Conqueror 
into  England  ?  The  ancient  manor-house  that  stood 
not  far  from  the  present  Holland  House,  must  have 
been  built  for  somebody  ;  and  visions  of  Aubrey  and 
his  successors,  however  transient,  naturally  present 
themselves  to  the  eye  of  the  local  antiquary. 

This  Aubrey  de  Vere  came  from  Holland  with 
the  first  William,  as  countrymen  of  his  did  after- 
wards with  William  the  Third.  He  died,  however, 
a  monk  ;  perhaps  out  of  penitence  for  the  wrongs 
which  he  had  committed  as  a  soldier.  The  title  of 
Earl  of  Oxford  came  into  the  family  with  his 
grandson.  Almost  all  his  successors  were  stirring 
soldiers  and  influential  subjects.  One  of  them  was 
a  Magna  Charta  baron  ;  another  a  commander  at 
the  battles  of  Cressy  and  Poitiers ;  another  at 
Agincourt ;  another  was  the  great  lord  who  re- 
ceived Henry  the  Seventh  at  his  house  with  such 
a  magnificent  show  of  retainers,  and  who,  notwith- 
standing his  having  been  one  of  the  chief  instruments 
in  setting  that  money-scraper  on  the  throne,  was 
fined  by  his  sharp-eyed  and  shabby  visitor,  for 
entertaining  him  at  a  cost  beyond  the  law. 

The  family  branched  out  into  congenial  worthies, 
a  daughter  of  one  of  whom,  the  'starry  Vere'  of 
some  noble  verses  by  Marvell",  was  the  Lady  Fairfax, 
who  gave  that  brave  contradiction,  in  Westminster 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB        179 

Hall,  to  the  assertion  that  all  the  people  of  England 
were  indicters  of  Charles  the  First ; — '  No !  not  the 
hundredth  part  of  them.'  In  short,  the  word  Vere 
was  almost  synonymous  in  English  history  with 
whatsoever  was  noble  and  dignified,  when  in  its 
twentieth  Earl  of  Oxford,  it  came  to  a  sorry  end 
in  the  person  of  a  profligate  time-server,  who 
accommodated  himself  to  every  Court  in  succession 
— Tory,  Commonwealth,  and  Whig,  and  who  crowned 
his  anti-heroical  achievements  by  cheating  an  actress 
with  a  false  marriage. 

The  Kensington  property,  however,  was  saved  the 
disgrace  of  belonging  to  this  scoundrel ;  for  he  died 
long  after  it  had  been  carried,  by  a  co-heiress,  into 
the  families  of  Argyle  and  others,  who  sold  it  to 
Sir  Walter  Cope,  the  builder  of  Holland  House. 

But  before  we  part  with  the  Veres,  we  have  a 
quarrel  to  pick  with  the  whole  of  them,  or  rather 
with  their  name,  and  with  the  Vere,  whosoever 
he  was,  who  first  gave  them  their  motto,  Vero  Nihil 
Venus — Nothing  truer  than  true ;  that  is  to  say, 
pun-ically  speaking,  Nothing  more  veritable  than 
Vere.  For  the  fact  is,  saving  their  Lordships' 
valours  (and  we  think  we  see  their  dust  redden  as 
we  say  it — but  it  is  the  inventor's  fault,  not  ours), 
the  motto  is  a  lie.  Vere  does  not  mean  '  true.' 
The  family  came  from  Holland ;  the  word  in 
Dutch  is  written  Weer ;  it  is  the  name  of  the 
place  in  the  isle  of  Walcheren,  which  the  owners 


1 8o        THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB 

quitted  for  drier  quarters ;  and  the  word  means 
neither  more  nor  less  than  the  same  word  in 
English — weir  or  wear ;  that  is  to  say,  a  dam, 
fish-trap,  or  flood-gate.  '  Aubrey  de  Vere '  is  as 
fine  an  aristocratical  sound  as  can  well  be 
imagined,  and  it  is  a  pity  to  spoil  it ;  but  truth 
must  be  told.  Aubrey  de  Vere  means  Aubrey 
of  the  dam,  fish-trap,  or  flood-gate.  Amicus  Vere, 
sed  magis  arnica  veritas.  The  inventor  of  the 
motto,  had  he  loved  the  truth  as  much  as  he  did 
a  pun,  should  have  taken  a  dam  for  his  crest,  with 
the  words,  Verus  Bataviniter — True  as  I'm  a 
Dutchman. 

In  short,  the  Veres  originated  with  the  coasters 
or  others,  whoever  they  were,  a  hardy,  painstaking 
race,  ancestors  of  the  Vandykes  and  Vandammes, — 
who,  according  to  the  witty  poet,  fished  up  Holland 
out  of  the  sea,  and  who  obtained  distinction  with 
one  another  in  proportion  to  their  success  in  the 
invention  of  shovels,  and  consolidations  of  a  ditch. 

'  For  as  with  pigmies,  who  best  kills  the  crane, 
Among  the  hungry  who  best  treasures  grain, 
Among  the  blind  the  one-eyed  blinkard  reigns, 
So  rules  among  the  drowned  he  that  drains. 
Not  who  first  sees  the  rising  sun,  commands  ; 
But  who  could  first  discern  the  rising  lands : 
Who  best  could  know  to  pump  an  earth  so  leak, 
Him  they  their  lord  and  country's  father  speak  : 
To  make  a  bank  was  a  great  plot  of  state ; — 
Invent  a  shovel,  and  be  a  magistrate.' 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB        181 

It  may  be  added,  to  complete  the  notice  of  the 
Veres,  that  the  present  representation  of  the  race  is 
in  the  Beauclerk  family,  the  daughter  of  the  last 
lord  having  married  the  first  Duke  of  St  Albans, 
the  son  of  Charles  the  Second  by  Nell  Gwynn.  The 
two  fathers,  it  is  to  be  feared,  helped  to  spoil,  for 
a  time,  the  blood  of  the  actress ;  for  Sidney  Beau- 
clerk,  their  grandson  (father  of  Johnson's  Topham 
Beauclerk),  is  said  to  have  been  as  great  a  'raf  as 
either  of  them,  without  inheriting  any  of  the  royal 
wit.  This  could  not  be  said  of  Topham,  however 
he  might  have  resembled  the  king  in  more  respects 
than  one ;  for  though  Johnson,  in  one  of  the  most 
extraordinary  compliments  on  record,  told  him  'his 
body  was  all  vice,'  he  added  that  '  his  mind  was 
all  virtue ' ;  a  combination  of  totals  which,  to  the 
doctor's  surprise,  Beauclerk  did  not  seem  happy  to 
admit.  Something  of  such  a  mixture  of  extremes 
is,  however,  not  impossible  as  the  world  goes ;  so 
here,  we  are  to  imagine,  was  a  blink  of  the  '  starry 
Vere'  shining  on  the  mud  of  the  debauchees. 

But  we  are  losing  sight  of  Holland  House.  Sir 
Walter  Cope,  the  purchaser  of  the  Vere  property  in 
Kensington,  seems  to  have  been  one  of  the  money- 
getters,  who  profited  by  the  endeavours  which  James 
the  First  made  to  supply  his  lavish  exchequer  with- 
out the  help  of  a  Parliament.  He  built  the  house, 
or. rather  the  main  body  of  the  house  (the  centre 
and  turrets),  about  the  year  1607,  and  bequeathed 


1 82        THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB 

it  to  Henry  Rich,  Earl  of  Holland,  as  the  husband 
of  his  daughter  and  heiress,  Isabella.  The  wings 
and  arcades  were  added  by  the  Earl. 

This  Earl  of  Holland  was  the  younger  son  of 
Robert  Rich,  first  Earl  of  Warwick,  by  Penelope, 
daughter  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  Earl  of  Essex,  the 
Stella  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney.  He  was  a  handsome, 
showy  man  ;  was  a  favourite  with  James's  favourite, 
the  Duke  of  Buckingham  ;  and  had  the  reputation 
of  being  more  than  in  the  good  graces  of  Charles  the 
First's  queen  ;  probably  on  no  other  ground  than  the 
fact  of  his  having  fetched  her  as  a  bride  from  France, 
and  been  coxcombical  in  his  attentions  on  the  way. 

He  and  his  friend,  Hay,  Earl  of  Carlisle,  were 
the  twin  stars  of  the  great  world,  next  after  patron 
Buckingham  ;  and  Holland  House,  during  the  pros- 
perous portion  of  Rich's  career,  must  have  enter- 
tained in  its  saloons  all  the  rank  and  fashion  of  the 
time.  Among  others  came  Bassompierre,  the  French 
Ambassador,  who  with  the  dandy  indifference  of  his 
countrymen  respecting  the  orthographies  of  other 
countries,  or  because  he  was  too  fine  a  gentleman 
to  hear  the  word  properly  from  the  first,  has  re- 
corded Kensington  under  the  mincing  appellation 
of  Stintinton. 

'  Wednesday  25. — Dined  with  the  Earl  of  Holland 
at  Stintinton.'* 

*  So,  on  a  visit  to  him  at  Hampton  Court,  he  calls  that  village 
Imtincourt — 


THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB    183 

Unfortunately,  Rich's  coxcombry  made  him  over- 
sensitive to  what  he  thought  attentions  or  the  reverse 
from  ruling  powers,  and  in  the  Civil  Wars  he  went 
to  and  fro  in  his  partisanship  with  so  provoking  a 
caprice,  now  playing  the  part  of  a  knight-errant  for 
king  and  queen,  and  now  sulking  at  Holland  House 
and  receiving  visits  from  the  disaffected  for  some 
imaginary  affront,  that  when  the  Parliament  at  last 
seized  him  and  put  him  to  death  for  making  a 
stand  against  the  death  of  the  king,  his  end  was 
a  grief  to  nobody.  Foppish  to  the  last,  he  died 
in  a  white  satin  waistcoat,  and  a  cap  ditto  with 
silver  lace. 

Five  months  after  the  Earl's  execution,  Holland 
House  was  occupied  by  the  Parliamentary  General 
Fairfax,  husband  of  the  'starry  Vere,'  who  thus 
found  herself,  under  very  extraordinary  circum- 
stances, contemplating  the  property  of  her  ancestors. 
A  journal  of  the  day  says,  '  The  Lord  General 
(Fairfax)  is  removed  from  Queen  Street  to  the  late 
Earl  of  Holland's  house  at  Kensington,  where  he 
intends  to  reside.'  (This  Queen  Street  is  the  present 
Queen  Street  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  then  one  of 
the  most  fashionable  quarters  in  London.)  It  was 
at  this  period  we  are  to  suppose  Cromwell  and 
Ireton  conferring  on  the  lawn. 

'  Went  to  see  the  Earl  of  Holland,  who  was  sick  at  Imtincourt.' 
(Le  Vendredy  16. — Je  fus  voir  le  Comte  de  Hollande,  malade  a 
Imtincourt.     Le  Mercredi  25. — Je  fus  diner  chez  le  Comte  de  Hollande 

a  St intintun. ) 


1 84        THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

The  mansion,  however,  was  soon  restored  to  the 
earl's  widow  and  her  children  ;  and  from  that  time 
it  remained  quietly  in  the  possession  of  the  family, 
almost  as  long  as  they  lasted.  The  Earl  and  his 
wife,  like  the  extinguished  court,  had  been  friends 
of  the  drama ;  and  for  a  few  days  during  the  first 
establishment  of  the  republic,  and  a  longer  period 
in  the  reign  of  Cromwell,  the  players,  who  had  been 
great  loyalists,  and  who  contrived  to  perform  secretly 
now  and  then  at  noblemen's  houses,  where  purses 
were  collected  for  their  benefit,  found  special  encour- 
agement in  the  house  before  us. 

From  the  Restoration  to  the  time  of  the  Georges, 
Holland  House  appears  to  have  been  let  by  the 
noble  owners  on  short  leases,  and  to  a  variety  of 
persons ;  sometimes  in  apartments  to  lodgers ;  or, 
more  probably,  a  friend  was  now  and  then  accom- 
modated for  nothing.  Among  these  various 
occupants,  the  duration  of  whose  abodes  in  the 
house  is  unknown,  the  names  of  the  following  have 
transpired  : — 

Arthur  Annesley,  first  Earl  of  Anglesea,  so  created 
by  Charles  the  Second.  He  had  been  President  of 
the  Council  at  the  close  of  the  Protectorate,  and 
opened  the  correspondence  with  the  restored  king. 

Sir  John  Chardin,  the  traveller.  He  was  a  French 
Protestant,  and  a  jeweller.  He  settled  in  England, 
and  was  knighted  by  Charles  the  Second  ;  probably 
by  way  of  payment  on  account,  for  some  bill  sent 


^__ 


&#&?* 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB        185 

in  and  delivered  to  Madame  the  Duchess  of  Ports- 
mouth, of  Cleveland,  or  of  Mazarin. 

The  fantastical  Duchess  of  Buckinghamshire  — 
Catherine  Darnley — illegitimate  daughter  of  James 
the  Second,  who  took  upon  her  the  state  of  a  prin- 
cess. Her  first  husband  was  one  of  the  Anglesea 
family  before  mentioned. 

From  a  passage  in  one  of  the  letters  of  his 
daughter,  Mrs  Morice,  it  is  not  improbable  that  the 
famous  Jacobite  bishop,  Atterbury,  who  was  very 
intimate  with  the  duchess,  had  once  apartments  in 
this  house.  It  is  certain  that  his  daughter  and  her 
husband  lived  there ;  for  some  of  their  letters  to 
the  bishop,  ranging  over  a  space  of  several  years, 
are  dated  from  it.  This  is  the  daughter,  whose 
going  to  meet  him  in  exile,  and  meeting  him  only 
to  die,  has  given  so  affecting  a  turn  to  the  last  days 
of  the  proud  and  turbulent  prelate.  He  appears  to 
have  been  a  loving  father.  Atterbury's  books  were 
preserved  in  Holland  House  during  his  exile,  and 
apartments  were  kept  ready  for  him  by  Mr  Morice, 
in  case  of  his  return. 

But  the  most  interesting  of  the  temporary  lodgers 
in  Holland  House  was  the  famous  William  Penn, 
founder  of  Pennsylvania.  By  a  singular  piece  of 
negligence  in  our  memorandum  making,  owing,  most 
probably,  to  the  hurry  of  the  very  interest  we  were 
taking  in  the  account  of  the  man,  we  omitted,  in  our 
first  edition  of  this  book,  to  mention  the  fact  of 


1 86        THE   OLD    COURT  SUBURB 

Perm's  having  lived  for  a  while  in  Kensington  ;  and 
it  was  not  till  we  met  with  a  subsequent  account  of 
him,  that  we  became  aware  of  his  having  resided  in 
this  particular  house.  '  The  house  was  large,'  says 
his  biographer,  Mr  Dixon,  '  and  he  had  many  visitors. 
His  influence  with  the  King  (James  II.)  was  well 
known,  and  every  man  with  a  real  grievance  found 
in  him  a  counsellor  and  a  friend.  Envoys  were  sent 
from  the  American  colonies  to  solicit  his  influence 
in  their  behalf;  members  of  his  own,  and  other 
religious  bodies,  who  had  petitions  to  present, 
crowded  to  his  levees :  and  sometimes  not  less  than 
an  hundred  persons  were  in  attendance  at  his  hour 
of  rising.' 

This  was  at  the  time  when  James,  in  his  zeal  for 
Popery,  was  pretending  to  love  Penn's  great  principle 
of  universal  toleration.  Penn  had  always  had  access 
to  him,  as  the  son  of  Admiral  Penn  ;  and  the  access 
at  this  period  gave  him  singular  influence,  and  was 
thought  to  have  given  him  more. 

Unfortunately,  we  became  acquainted  with  this 
particular  respecting  Holland  House  too  closely 
upon  the  call  for  a  second  edition  of  our  book,  to 
enable  us  to  speak  of  Penn  at  any  length  propor- 
tionate to  his  merit ;  otherwise,  he  was  a  man  of  so 
rare  and  admirable  a  nature,  and  we  entertain,  on 
many  accounts,  so  special  a  love  for  his  memory, 
that  we  should  have  indulged  ourselves  with  en- 
deavouring to  reconcile  some  apparently  conflicting 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB        187 

accounts  of  him,  and  to  condense  the  many  interesting 
circumstances  of  his  career  into  such  a  summary,  as 
might  not  have  been  inadmissible  into  a  book  of 
anecdote.  But  as  it  is,  we  must  content  ourselves 
with  noticing  two  points  respecting  his  character 
and  manners ; — one  upon  which  we  cannot  but  think 
he  has  been  under-rated  by  an  admirable  historian ; 
and  another,  in  which  singularly  wrong  conclusions 
have  been  drawn  respecting  his  personal  appearance 
and  demeanour. 

The  first  is  the  extraordinary  regard  entertained 
for  him  by  Charles  and  James  the  Second,  and  the 
doubt  it  has  thrown  on  the  entire  sincerity  of  his 
nature ;  the  conclusion,  not  unnatural  in  some  points 
of  view,  being,  that  to  be  able  to  please  such  men, 
and  to  possess  any  special  influence  with  them  in 
favour  even  of  that  toleration  of  religious  opinion 
which  they  pretended  to  fall  in  with  at  times  for 
their  own  purposes,  argued  a  suspicious  amount  of 
flattery  in  the  man,  or  at  least  of  disreputable  ex- 
pediency. But  we  take  the  whole  secret  of  the 
matter  to  have  been  this — that  Penn  was  one  of 
that  kind  of  men,  very  rare,  it  is  true — not  unreason- 
ably to  be  met  with  caution  in  the  first  instance, — 
and  certainly  not  to  be  looked  for  in  courts,  except 
under  rarest  circumstances, — who  being  thoroughly 
honest  of  intention,  and  sincere  in  speech,  do  never- 
theless succeed  in  being  acceptable  with  men  of 
every  kind,  by  the  simple  circumstance  of  knowing 


1 88        THE   OLD    COURT   SUBURB 

how  to  do  justice  to  the  good  qualities  which  all 
human  beings,  more  or  less,  mingle  with  their  in- 
firmities. It  is  thus  that  they  acquire  with  them 
a  privilege  of  dissent,  and  even  of  remonstrance, 
astonishing  even  to  those  who  are  aware  that  kings 
are  men  too.  It  is  not,  we  think,  sufficiently  con- 
sidered by  objectors  in  this  instance,  that,  as  men, 
even  kings  can  be  charmed,  perhaps  more  too  than 
other  men,  with  realising  a  nature  at  once  sincere 
and  loving,  and  being  made  sure  of  the  realisation 
by  finding  the  sincerity  never  doubting  what  is  good 
in  them,  because  the  love  never  pretends  affection 
to  what  is  ill.  Penn,  who  had  a  lively  flow  of  con- 
versation, and  who  had  been  familiar  with  the  royal 
brothers  from  his  youth,  through  the  connection 
above  noticed  and  the  natural  sweetness  of  his  own 
disposition,  could  be  cheerful  with  Charles,  serious 
with  James,  and  singularly  acceptable  with  both, 
because  the  one  found  in  him  a  virtuous  man,  singu- 
larly full  of  animal  spirits  and  good-nature,  and  the 
other  a  man  able  to  be  grave  and  in  earnest,  without 
believing  all  earnestness  confined  to  men  of  his 
own  opinion. 

The  other  point  is  of  no  importance  compared 
with  this ;  but  it  is  not  uncurious  or  unamusing. 
We  allude  to  the  strange  misrepresentation  of 
Penn's  appearance  and  time  of  life  in  West's  popular 
picture  of  his  Treaty  with  the  Indians.  The  ordinary 
notion  of  Penn  in  people's  imaginations,  in  conse- 


THE   OLD   COURT  SUBURB        189 

quence  of  this  picture,  of  the  popular  idea  of  the 
sect  which  he  joined,  and  of  a  particular  species 
of  costume  which  he  never  wore  (for  it  arose  with 
a  subsequent  generation)  is  that  of  a  Quaker  of  the 
common  well-meaning  sort,  who  had  spirit  enough 
to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  state,  but  was  rather 
a  heavy  kind  of  man  than  otherwise  both  in  mind 
and  body,  and  as  much  disposed  to  take  the 
worldly-wise  view  of  the  prosperity  of  a  country,  as 
any  money-maker  who  joined  him. 

Now  Penn  was  as  much  the  reverse  of  all  this,  as 
the  elements  of  things  are  from  their  adulterations, 
or  grace  and  vivacity  from  the  lumpishness  of  a 
Dutch  feeder.  Penn  joined  the  Quakers,  not  because 
he  was  a  formalist,  but  because  he  agreed  with  their 
liberal  views  of  Christianity  and  toleration,  and 
because  he  thought  them  as  sincere  and  single- 
hearted  as  himself.  His  dress  was  only  a  simpler 
modification  of  his  usual  attire  ;  and  instead  of  being 
the  corpulent  elderly  person  he  appears  in  Mr 
West's  picture,  he  was  at  that  time,  says  Mr  Dixon, 
but  '  thirty-eight  years  old ;  light  and  graceful  in 
form,'  and  according  to  a  lady  who  was  an  eye- 
witness of  the  ceremony,  'the  handsomest,  best- 
looking,  most  lively  gentleman '  she  had  ever  seen. 
His  dress  had  even  ribbons  and  ruffles  ;  and  round 
his  waist  was  a  blue  silken  sash.  In  this  attire, 
with  these  manners,  in  the  midst  of  old  friends  and 
new  (for  the  Indians  loved  him  from  first  to  last), 


i9o   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

and  surrounded  by  the  old  forests  that  gave  a  name 
to  the  country,  Penn  ratified  that  famous  treaty 
which,  as  Voltaire  says,  was  the  only  one  in  the 
history  of  the  world  that  was  made  without  an  oath, 
and  that  was  never  broken.  So  potent  for  the 
greatest  purposes,  in  the  affairs  of  this  world,  if  men 
would  but  believe  it,  are  the  qualities  of  truth  and 
goodness. 

The  temporary  inhabitant  of  Holland  House  next 
in  interest,  as  well  as  point  of  time,  to  Penn,  was 
Shippen,  the  famous  Jacobite,  immortalised  by  Pope 
for  his  sincerity. 

'  I  love  to  pour  out  all  myself  as  plain 
As  downright  Shippen,  or  as  old  Montaigne ; 
In  them,  as  certain  to  be  loved  as  seen, 
The  soul  stood  forth,  nor  kept  a  thought  within.1 

No  wonder  that  such  a  man  drew  houses,  when 
he  spoke  in  Parliament,  and  that  none  but  the 
stupid  kept  away. 

'  More  loves  the  youth,  just  come  to  his  estate, 
To  range  the  fields,  than  in  the  House  debate  ; 
More  he  delights  in  fav'rite  Jowler's  tongue, 
Than  in  Will  Shippen,  or  Sir  William  Yonge.' 

Bramstorfs  '  Art  of  Politics? 

Very  different  persons,  however,  were  honest  Will 
Shippen  and  unprincipled  William  Yonge,  of  whom 
Sir  Robert  Walpole  said,  that  '  nothing  but  his 
talents  could  have  supported  his  character,  and 
nothing  but  his  character  have  kept  down  his 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB        191 

talents.'  Shippen  had  talents  and  character  both 
— the  latter  of  the  highest  description.  Though 
not  so  poor  as  Andrew  Marvell,  nor  on  minor 
points,  perhaps,  so  uncompromising,  he  was  never- 
theless to  the  Whigs  of  the  reign  of  George  the 
First  what  Marvell  had  been  to  the  Tories  of 
Charles  and  James  —  the  eloquent,  witty,  open- 
hearted,  and  upon  the  whole,  incorruptible  opponent. 
When  asked  how  he  should  vote,  he  would  say,  '  I 
cannot  tell  until  I  hear  from  Rome.'  At  Rome 
resided  the  Pretender.  Sir  Robert  Walpole  ob- 
served of  him,  and  of  Parliament  in  general,  '  I 
will  not  say  who  are  to  be  corrupted,  but  I  will 
say  who  is  incorruptible ;  and  that  is  Shippen.' 
Shippen,  in  turn,  would  say  of  Sir  Robert,  '  Robin 
and  I  are  two  honest  men.  He  is  for  King  George, 
and  I  for  King  James ;  but  those  men  with  the 
long  cravats  (meaning  Sandys,  Rushout,  and  others) 
they  only  desire  places,  either  under  King  George 
or  King  James.' 

He  was  sent  to  the  Tower  for  saying  of  King 
George  (who  could  not  speak  English),  that  'the 
only  infelicity  of  his  Majesty's  reign  was,  that  he 
was  unacquainted  with  our  language  and  constitu- 
tion.' Both  sides  of  the  House  wished  him  to 
soften  the  expression,  but  he  declined.  The  Prince 
of  Wales,  afterwards  George  the  Second,  who  was 
at  variance  with  the  King,  sent  a  person  to  him 
with  the  offer  of  a  thousand  pounds  (as  a  '  con- 


192   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

venience,'  we  suppose,  during  his  imprisonment) ;  but 
it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  he  who  would  not 
alter  his  words  for  love,  would  do  it  for  money. 

Sir  Robert  Walpole  intercepted  a  letter  written 
to  Shippen  by  the  Pretender,  and  put  it,  himself, 
into  his  hands.  It  must  have  been  of  a  descrip- 
tion more  than  usually  perilous,  considering  how 
openly  Shippen  talked  of  his  correspondence  with 
the  exile.  Sir  Robert  took  the  opportunity  of 
saying,  that  he  did  not  expect  to  alter  the  other's 
sentiments,  but  would  hope  for  his  support  in  case 
of  being  personally  attacked.  To  this  Shippen 
agreed,  but  remained  in  all  other  respects  the  same 
man.  He  was  son  of  a  country  clergyman,  and 
possessed  a  moderate  independence ;  but  latterly 
married  a  Northumberland  heiress,  who  turned  out 
unworthy  of  him.  He  appears,  however,  to  have 
had  a  regard  for  her  relations,  for  he  generally 
spent  his  summers  with  them.  At  other  times,  he 
resided  sometimes  at  Holland  House,  and  some- 
times at  Richmond  ;  and  he  lived  for  many  years 
in  Norfolk  Street,  in  the  Strand. 

Shippen  is  said  to  have  been  a  forcible,  and  even 
vehement  speaker,  pouring  out  his  words  too  rapidly; 
though  at  the  same  time  he  was  accustomed  to 
speak  low,  and  to  '  hold  his  glove  before  his  mouth ' 
— a  curious  trait  in  the  bearing  of  so  earnest  a  man. 
It  looked  as  if  he  was  conscious  of  wanting  a  screen, 
though  determined  to  disregard  it ;  and,  in  fact,  he 


THE   OLD   COURT   SUBURB         193 

appears  to  have  been  in  the  habit  of  taking  away 
his  glove  at  particular  points,  and  throwing  out  his 
words  with  great  animation.  He  wrote  verses ;  but 
they  were  less  poetical  than  to  the  purpose. 

In  sixteen  hundred  and  eighty-nine,  King  William 
the  Third  went  to  look  at  Holland  House,  with  the 
view  of  taking  it  ;  but  he  preferred  the  house  of 
the  Earl  of  Nottingham,  which  thus  became  the 
Palace.  The  preference  could  hardly  have  been 
on  account  of  the  size ;  for  he  might  have  enlarged 
the  one  house  as  he  did  the  other.  Probably,  how- 
ever, the  rooms  were  larger  in  the  Nottingham 
House,  and  so  were  better  to  begin  with.  Perhaps, 
also,  William  did  not  find  the  grounds  round  about 
Holland  House  flat  enough  to  suit  his  Dutch  pre- 
dilections. 

To  return  to  the  owners  of  the  mansion  which 
had  thus  been  successively  occupied  ;  nothing  seems 
known  of  Robert,  second  Earl  of  Holland,  who  had 
quietly  succeeded  his  father,  except  that,  in  failure 
of  the  elder  branch  of  the  family,  he  also  succeeded 
as  fifth  Earl  of  Warwick  and  Holland. 

His  son  and  successor,  Edward,  married  Charlotte, 
daughter  of  Sir  Thomas  Myddleton,  of  Chirk  Castle, 
in  the  county  of  Flint ;  a  lady,  whose  name  and  origin 
we  mention,  because  after  the  Earl's  death  she 
became  the  wife  of  Addison.  Edward  Henry,  her 
son,  the  next  Earl,  is  the  youth  whose  statue  in 
Kensington  Church  has  been  noticed  in  a  former 
N 


194   THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB 

chapter.  He  was  succeeded  by  another  Edward, 
his  kinsman ;  and  the  daughter  and  only  child  of 
this  nobleman  dying  unmarried,  the  title  became 
extinct.  This  was  in  the  year  seventeen  hundred 
and  fifty-nine. 

The  house  fell  into  the  possession  of  William 
Edwardes,  a  Welsh  gentleman,  whose  father  had 
married  the  daughter  of  the  first  Earl  of  Warwick 
and  Holland,  and  who,  in  the  year  seventeen  hundred 
and  seventy-six,  was  created  Baron  Kensington  ;  but 
fourteen  years  previous  he  had  sold  the  family 
mansion  to  the  first  Lord  Holland  of  the  Fox  family, 
by  whom  the  title  had  been  consequently  allowed 
to  be  taken ;  and  in  the  possession  of  this  dis- 
tinguished race  it  remains. 

We  have  a  good  deal  to  say  of  them  ;  but  first 
we  must  return  to  Countess  Charlotte,  and  her  still 
more  distinguished  husband. 


NOTES 

CHAPTER  ONE 

The  meaning  of  the  word  Kensington  (p.  5).  '  Kensing- 
ton .  .  is  the  "  ton  "  or  town  of  the  Saxon  family  or  tribe  of 
the  Kensingas,  a  tribe  who  appear  also  in  other  parts  of 
England,  and  may  perhaps  be  the  same  as  the  Kemsingas.' 
Loftie's  'Kensington,  Picturesque  and  Historical,'  1888, 
p.  12. 

'Edward'  (p.  5).  In  Doomsday  Book,  as  quoted  by 
Mr  Loftie,  it  is  'Edwin.'  'Hoc  Manerium  [Chenesitun] 
tenuit  Eduuinus  teignus  regis  Edwardi  et  vendere  potuit' 

Directly  or  indirectly  (p.  8).  The  manor  of  Kensington 
ceased  to  belong  to  the  De  Veres  in  1526,  when  it  passed 
to  the  Oxford  family.  It  ultimately  came  to  the  Earl  and 
Countess  of  Argyll,  who  sold  it  in  1610  to  Sir  Walter 
Cope. 

CHAPTER  TWO 

The  Great  Exhibition  of  1851  (p.  n),  subsequently 
re-erected  at  Sydenham  as  the  Crystal  Palace,  occupied 
a  site  to  the  east  of  the  present  Albert  Memorial. 

Ennismore  or  Listowell  House  (p.  13),  now  again  King- 
ston House,  is  still  standing,  and  is  the  residence  of  the 
Earl  of  Listowel,  K.P. 

The  Marquis  of  Wellesley  (p.  14),  the  Duke  of 
Wellington's  elder  brother,  died  in  1842.  As  stated  at 


i96  NOTES 

p.  15,  he  had  been  Governor-General  of  India  from  1797 
to  1802. 

The  Duchess  of  Kingston  (p.  14),  who,  in  Walpole's 
phrase,  '  predecessed '  the  Marquis  at  Kingston  House, 
is  a  notoriety  in  eighteenth-century  annals.  Why  Leigh 
Hunt  styles  her  'an  adventuress,' is  not  clear,  as  she  was 
the  daughter  of  Colonel  Thomas  Chudleigh,  Lieutenant- 
Governor  of  Chelsea  Hospital,  and  she  was  maid-of-honour 
to  the  Princess  of  Wales.  Her  first  husband  was  Augustus 
John  Hervey,  afterwards  third  Earl  of  Bristol,  to  whom 
she  was  married  privately  in  1747.  In  1749  she  made 
her  famous  undress  appearance  at  the  Jubilee  Masquerade 
at  Ranelagh,  scandalising  even  her  sister  maids-of-honour, 
not — as  Mrs  Montagu  says  censoriously — 'of  maids  the 
strictest.'  In  1769  she  married  the  Duke  of  Kingston, 
her  first  husband,  who  became  Earl  of  Bristol  in  1775, 
being  still  alive.  She  was  tried  for  bigamy  in  1776,  found 
guilty,  pleaded  her  privilege  of  peerage,  and  migrated  to 
St  Assize,  near  Paris,  where  she  turned  rabbit  merchant. 
In  1788  she  died  of  a  fit  of  passion.  There  are  several 
prints  of  her  as  '  Iphigenia,'  including  one  by  Gainsborough. 
She  also  appears  in  the  foreground  of  Parr's  print,  after 
Canaletti,  of  the  Jubilee  Ball. 

London  and  Wise  (p.  18),  referred  to  in  Nos.  5  and 
477  of  the  'Spectator,'  had  their  nursery  at  Brompton  Park, 
south  of  Park  and  Kingston  Houses.  They  favoured  the 
formal  Dutch  style ;  and  their  '  Laudable  Undertakings ' 
are  eulogised  by  Evelyn  in  his  translation  of  De  la 
Quintinye's  'Compleat  Gard'ner,'  1693.  Besides  Ken- 
sington Gardens,  they  directed  the  gardens  of  Hampton 
Court,  Blenheim,  Wanstead,  Edger,  and  Melbourne  in 
Derbyshire.  Their  Brompton  nursery  was  estimated  to 


NOTES  197 

contain  from  ,£30,000  to  ,£40,000  worth  of  plants.  In 
1706  they  published  a  translation  of  Louis  Liger's 
'Jardinier  Solitaire.' 


CHAPTER  THREE 

Mrs  Inchbald  (p.  20).     See  Chapter  VI. 

Count  D1  Or  say  (p.  21).     See  Chapter  IV. 

Grosvenor  Square  (p.  24),  No.  30  (now  35),  where,  on 
26th  December  1797,  Wilkes  died. 

Junius  visited  (p.  26).  This  is  to  beg  a  question  which 
many  hold  should  be  shelved  as  mercilessly  as  the  discussion 
out  of  which  window  of  the  Banqueting  House  Charles  I. 
went  to  his  execution.*  Before  the  appearance  of  the 
'Old  Court  Suburb'  in  1855,  Lord  Chesterfield,  Lord 
Sackville,  Lord  Chatham,  Earl  Temple,  Burke,  Gibbon, 
and  others,  were  all  put  forward  as  rivals  of  Sir  Philip 
Francis ;  and  since  that  date  many  more  have  had  their 
advocates.  But  the  Francis  theory  still  obtains,  and  those 
who  desire  a  succinct  account  of  the  controversy  are  referred 
to  the  '  Note '  on  the  subject,  prefixed  by  Mr  C.  F.  Keary 
to  the  first  volume  of  'The  Francis  Letters '  [1901].  Mean- 
while, as  literature,  'Junius'  is  said  to  be  fast  becoming 
what,  in  popular  parlance,  is  known  as  'a  back  number.' 
There  is  a  portrait  of  Francis  by  James  Lonsdale  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

Mr  Taylor's  book  (p.  26).  This  is  '  The  Identity  of  Junius 
with  a  Distinguished  Living  Character' — i.e.  Francis,  who 
died  22nd  December  1818,  two  years  after  it  appeared. 

*  In  spite  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  dictum,  this  inquiry  has  recently 
been  pursued  to  an  unanswerable  point  by  Sir  Reginald  Palgrave 
(Architectural  Review,  March  1899,  p.  179  et  seq.). 


NOTES 

Its  arguments  were  hotly  contested  by  George  Chalmers, 
E.  H.  Barker,  and  C.  Wentworth  Dilke  ('Papers  of  a 
Critic'),  but  they  were  supported  by  the  investigations  of 
a  graphiologist,  Charles  Chabot  ('The  Handwriting  of 
Junius  professionally  investigated,'  1871). 

CHAPTER   FOUR 

Gore  House  (p.  31)  is  described  in  Wheatley  and  Cunning- 
ham's 'London'  (ii.  p.  130)  as  'a  long,  low,  stucco-fronted 
house,  which  faced  Kensington  Gardens.'  Wilberforce 
occupied  it  from  1808  to  1825.  At  this  date,  says  the 
'  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,'  Kensington  'was  still  in 
the  country,  and  his  garden  was  full  of  "lilacs,  laburnums, 
nightingales,  and  swallows." ' 

A  book  in  three  large  octavo  volumes  (p.  35),  by  R.  R. 
Madden,  1855.  It  must  have  just  appeared  when  Leigh 
Hunt  wrote. 

Seamore  Place  (p.  36).     At  No.  8. 

We  do  not  hear  of  ladies  (p.  37).  Nevertheless,  in  a 
drawing  we  have  seen  of  the  Gore  House  salon,  are  to 
be  observed  the  Honourable  Mrs  Norton,  Miss  L.  E. 
Landon,  and  Miss  Jane  Porter.  Leigh  Hunt  himself  is 
looking  on. 

He  had  fled  to  Paris  (p.  41).  Lady  Blessington  died 
4th  June  1849;  Count  D'Orsay,  4th  August  1852. 
Thackeray,  who  had  been  a  Gore  House  habitue,  gives 
an  account  of  him  in  the  interval.  '  D'Orsay  has  fitted 
himself  up  a  charming  atelier  with  arms  and  trophies, 
pictures  and  looking-glasses,  the  tomb  of  Blessington,  the 
sword  and  star  of  Napoleon,  and  a  crucifix  over  his  bed ; 
and  here  he  dwells  without  any  doubts  or  remorses,  ad- 


NOTES  199 

miring  himself  in  the  most  horrible  pictures  which  he 
has  painted,  and  the  statues  which  he  gets  done  for  him.' 
(Thackeray's  'Letters,'  1847-1855,  1887,  p.  in.) 

There  was  a  sale  of  the  goods  at  Gore  House  (p.  41).  '  Lady 
Blessington's  French  valet  wrote  to  tell  her  that  they  were 
selling  catalogues  all  day  long,  and  that  during  the  five  days 
that  things  were  on  view  more  than  20,000  persons  went  over 
the  place.  He  adds :  "  M.  Thackeray  est  venu  aussi,  et 
avait  les  larmes  aux  yeux  en  partant.  C'est  peut-etre  la 
seule  personne  que  j'ai  vue  re"ellement  affecte"e  en  votre 
depart."'  ('The  Gorgeous  Lady  Blessington,'  by  John 
Fyvie,  Anglo-Saxon  Review,  vol.  x.  Sept.  1901.) 


CHAPTER  FIVE 

The  estate  of  the  Commissioners  for  the  Exhibition  of 
1851  (p.  58),  which  lies  between  Exhibition  Road  and 
Queen's  Gate,  is  now  occupied,  among  other  buildings, 
by  the  Royal  Albert  Hall,  the  Imperial  Institute,  and 
the  Natural  History  Museum. 

Gloucester  Lodge  (p.  58)  was  pulled  down  about  1850, 
its  name  surviving  in  the  present  Gloucester  Road.  To 
this  house,  then  secluded  in  beautiful  gardens,  Canning 
was  carried  after  his  duel  with  Castlereagh  on  Putney 
Heath. 

The  real  name  of  Louise  de  Querouaille  (p.  60),  'L 
duchesse  de  Portsmout' — as  she  signs  herself  in  the 
French  National  Archives  —  was  '  Louise  Rene"e  de 
Keroualle.'  Her  sumptuous  lodgings  at  the  end  of  the 
Long  or  Stone  Gallery  at  Whitehall,  'pull'd  down,'  says 
Evelyn,  'and  rebuilt  no  lesse  than  three  times  to  please 
her,'  were  burnt  in  1691.  When  she  lived  at  Kensington 


200  NOTES 

is  not  clear,  but  it  must  have  been  long  subsequent  to 
this  date. 

Notwithstanding  his  disclaimer  to  Garrick,  Johnson, 
upon  another  occasion,  seems  to  have  expressed  himself 
plainly  enough  concerning  poor  Elphinstone's  amazing 
translation  of  Martial  (p.  63) : — '  There  are  in  these  verses 
too  much  folly  for  madness,  I  think,  and  too  much  mad- 
ness for  folly '  (Birkbeck  Hill's  '  Johnsonian  Miscellanies,' 
1897,  i.  1 88).  In  Elphinstone's  time,  Kensington  House  was 
a  noble  mansion,  opposite  to  the  King's  gardens,  with  an 
elegant  ball-room  with  handsome  bow-windows  at  the  top 
of  the  eastern  division  of  the  house  (Nichols's  'Literary 
Anecdotes,'  1812,  iii.  32).  According  to  the  same  authority, 
Elphinstone,  who  died  in  1809,  preserved  to  the  end 
the  flapped  and  capeless  coat,  powdered  bag-wig  with  high 
toupee,  cocked  hat,  buckles,  and  amber-headed  cane  of  the 
previous  century.  His  brother-in-law,  Strahan,  disapproved 
as  much  of  his  phonetic  spelling  as  of  his  Martial. 


CHAPTER  SIX 

Mr  Shiel  (p.  69).     Richard  Lalor  Shiel  died  in  1851. 

Mrs  Inchbald  (p.  80),  concerning  whom  there  are  many 
particulars  in  Chapter  XXXII.  vol.  i.  of  John  Taylor's 
'Records  of  my  Life,'  1830,  was  the  widow  of  a  minor  actor 
and  miniature  painter.  She  had  many  subsequent  suitors 
—John  Kemble,  it  is  reported,  among  the  number — but 
she  never  married  again,  alleging  sententiously,  '  That  for 
wedlock,  friendship  was  too  familiar,  and  love  too  pre- 
carious.' The  hero  of  the  pig-tail  incident  (Taylor  says) 
was  Harris,  the  chief  proprietor  of  Covent  Garden  Theatre. 


NOTES  201 

The  'painful  self-denial'  to  which  Leigh  Hunt  refers,  is 
explained  by  Taylor,  upon  Mrs  Inchbald's  own  authority, 
as  having  for  motive  the  support  of  poorer  relatives.  It 
was  Mrs  Inchbald  who  adapted  from  Kotzebue's  '  Das 
Kind  der  Liebe'  that  'Lovers'  Vows'  which  figures  so 
prominently  in  Jane  Austen's  '  Mansfield  Park.'  Taylor 
wrote  the  '  Prologue,'  and  supplied  the  verses  for  the 
'rhyming  Butler'  mentioned  in  Chapter  XIV.  of  the 
novel. 

CHAPTER  SEVEN 

Colby  House  (p.  84)  stood,  like  old  Kensington  House, 
on  the  site  afterwards  occupied,  until  1882,  by  the  Ken- 
sington House  erected  by  Mr  Grant  in  1873.  Faulkner, 
who  describes  Colby  House  minutely  (pp.  394-6),  says  it 
was  'two  stories  in  height.'  But  when  he  wrote  in  1820 
it  was  occupied  by  a  Mr  Mair,  who  may  have  added  to  it. 

The  Rookery  (p.  86).  This  also  disappeared  with  the 
erection  of  Kensington  House  in  1873. 

At  No.  1 6  Young  Street  (p.  87),  formerly  No.  13,  lived 
Thackeray  from  1847  to  1853,  and  here  he  wrote  'Vanity 
Fair,'  '  Pendennis,' '  Esmond,'  and  some  of  the  '  Newcomes.' 
It  is  a  house  with  'two  bulging  half  towers  which  flank 
the  central  doorway,'  and  give  it,  as  the  great  author 
thought,  the  air  of  a  feudal  castle.  '  I'll  have  a  flagstaff 
put  over  the  coping  of  the  wall,  and  I'll  hoist  a  standard 
when  I  am  at  home ! '  he  told  his  friend  Mr  Eyre  Crowe, 
who  has  made  a  pretty  picture  of  the  house  in  Scribner's 
Magazine  for  January  1897.  At  No.  16,  in  the  first  floor 
bedroom,  he  puffed  a  cigar  and  dictated  '  Esmond ' ;  and 
at  Young  Street  occurred  the  episode  of  the  irate  Irish 


202  NOTES 

gentleman  who  imagined  that  Thackeray  had  libelled  his 
relative  in  one  of  his  works — not,  as  Mr  Eyre  Crowe 
contends,  the  story  of  Catherine  Hayes. 

Fielding  (p.  89)  says  in  'Tom  Jones,'  Book  4,  chap,  ii., 
that  Sophy  Western  was  held  to  resemble  'the  famous 
Dutchess  of  Mazarine.'  The  Duchess  Mazarin,  as  Hor- 
tensia  Mancini  should  strictly  be  called,  died  at  Chelsea 
in  1699,  before  Fielding  was  born.  In  her  portrait  by  Pierre 
Mignard,  she  has  Miss  Western's  luxuriant  dark  hair  fall- 
ing on  her  shoulders. 

The  'Satyr  against  Wit,'  which  brought  so  many  foes 
upon  Sir  Richard  Blackmore  (p.  93),  was  published  late 
in  1699;  and  was  promptly  answered  by  the  gentlemen 
of  Will's  Coffee-house  in  'Commendatory  Verses  on  the 
Author  of  the  two  Arthurs'  (i.e.  the  Prince  and  King 
mentioned  at  p.  94).  Vanbrugh,  Garth,  Boyle,  Sedley, 
Maynwaring,  and  Steele  all  bore  part  in  it,  and  'Quack 
Maurus'  (as  Dryden  called  him)  fared  much  as  a  bear 
does  who  overturns  a  beehive.  He  was  a  dull,  well- 
meaning  man,  and  a  drowsy  poet,  'who  wrote  to  the 
rumbling  of  his  chariot  wheels.'  But  he  sometimes  said 
fine  things,  as  this,  which  Steele  quotes  in  No.  n  of 
'  The  Theatre ' :  '  He  who  rejoices  at  the  superior  merit 
of  another  man,  knows  a  greater  thing  of  himself  than 
he  possibly  can  know  of  another  man.' 

It  was  probably  from  the  Chiswick  brewer  (p.  96)  that 
Mawsoris  Buildings  (now  Row)  at  that  place  were  named. 
They  still  exist,  at  a  turning  out  of  Chiswick  Mall,  and 
are  memorable  as  the  residence  of  Pope,  when  that 
'paper-sparing  poet'  was  translating  the  'Iliad'  on  the 
backs  of  letters  and  envelopes. 

Herring  (p.   96)  was  painted  by  Hogarth  in  1745.      In 


NOTES  203 

Maclise's  Portrait  Gallery  there  is  a  terrible  picture  of  his 
successor  at  Kensington  Square  (p.  98),  which  loses  nothing 
under  the  interpretative  pen  of  Dante  Rossetti.  This  is 
Rossetti's  description  of  Charles  Maurice  de  Talleyrand- 
Perigord,  'author  of  "Palmerston,  une  Comedie  de  deux 
Ans," '  as  depicted  by  '  Alfred  Croquis  '  [Daniel  Maclise] : 
'One  picture  here  stands  out  from  the  rest  in  mental 
power,  and  ranks  Maclise  as  a  great  master  of  tragic  satire. 
It  is  that  which  grimly  shows  us  the  senile  torpor  of 
Talleyrand,  as  he  sits  in  after-dinner  sleep  between  the 
spread  board  and  the  fireplace,  surveyed  from  the  mantel- 
shelf by  the  busts  of  all  the  sovereigns  he  had  served. 
His  elbows  are  on  the  chair-arms ;  his  hands  hang ;  .  .  . 
the  book  he  read,  as  the  lore  he  lived  by,  has  dropped 
between  his  feet;  his  chap-fallen  mask  is  spread  upward 
as  the  scalp  rests  on  the  cushioned  chair-back ;  the  wick 
gutters  in  the  wasting  candle  beside  him ;  and  his  last 
master  claims  him  now.  All  he  was  is  gone ;  and  water 
or  fire  for  the  world  after  him — what  care  had  he?  The 
picture  is  more  than  a  satire,  it  might  be  called  a  diagram 
of  damnation :  a  ghastly  historical  verdict  which  becomes 
the  image  of  the  man  for  ever'  (Sharp's  'Rossetti,'  1882, 
p.  279).  After  this,  one  may  add  to  Leigh  Hunt's  closing 
lines  the  charitable  verdict  of  Jeffrey,  who  met  the  Prince 
at  Holland  House:  'He  is  more  natural,  plain,  and 
reasonable,  than  I  had  expected ;  a  great  deal  of  the 
repose  of  high  breeding  and  old  age,  with  a  mild  and 
benevolent  manner,  and  great  calmness  of  speech,  rather 
than  the  sharp,  caustic,  cutting  speech  of  a  practised 
utterer  of  bons  mots.  .  .  .  He  did  not  eat  much,  nor 
talk  much  about  eating,  except  only  when  he  inquired 
very  earnestly  into  the  nature  of  cocky-leekit.  ...  He 


204  NOTES 

drank  little  but  iced  water '  (Cockburn's  '  Life  of  Jeffrey,' 
1852,  i.  pp.  327-8).     Talleyrand  died  in  1838. 


CHAPTER  EIGHT 

Dr  John  Wall  Callcott  (1766-1821)  (p.  102)  lived  at 
Kensington  Mall,  in  a  house  afterwards  occupied  by  his 
brother,  Sir  Augustus  Wall  Callcott,  R.A.  (See  also  p. 
104.) 

Reginald  Spofforth  (1768-1837)  (p.  102)  is  referred  to 
again  in  Chapter  IX. 

The  old  Church  of  St  Mary  the  Virgin  (p.  103),  which 
Hunt  describes,  and  in  which  Macaulay  and  Thackeray 
succeeded  Wilberforce  and  Addison  as  worshippers,  dis- 
appeared in  1869,  when  a  new  Gothic  building,  from  the 
designs  of  Sir  Gilbert  Scott,  was  erected  in  its  place. 

The  famous  words  (p.  107),  which  Addison  is  said  to 
have  addressed  to  young  Lord  Warwick,  and  which  are 
commemorated  in  the  beautiful  couplet  of  Tickell — 

'  He  taught  us  how  to  live,  and  (oh,  too  high 
The  price  of  knowledge)  taught  us  to  die ' — 

rest  upon  the  authority  of  Young.  Eighteenth-century 
report  is  not  as  indulgent  to  Addison's  step-son  as  is 
Leigh  Hunt,  who  probably  had  never  read  the  pamphlets 
of  Colley  Gibber. 

'Johannes  Jortin  (p.  108)  mortalis  esse  desiit,  anno 
salutis  1770  aetatis  72' — is  the  full  text  of  the  epitaph 
of  the  author  of  the  'Life  of  Erasmus'  (1758-1760),  who 
was  also  vicar  of  Kensington  in  1762.  Dr  Johnson  liked 
his  sermons;  but  thought  his  'Erasmus'  dull  (Birkbeck 
Hill's  'Johnsonian  Miscellanies,'  1897,  ii.  p.  12). 


NOTES  205 

CHAPTER  NINE 

The  Reverend  Martin  Madan  (p.  1 1 1)  is  to-day,  perhaps, 
best  remembered  by  his  connection  with  William  Cowper. 
After  Cowper's  second  attack  of  insanity,  Madan's  minis- 
trations seem  to  have  afforded  his  unhappy  cousin  some 
temporary  relief.  But  the  '  Thelypthora '  came  upon 
Cowper  in  his  sane  moments,  and,  by  ill-fortune,  prompted 
that  '  Anti-Thelypthora,'  which  even  he  himself  came  after- 
wards to  regard  as  a  mistake.  It  would  have  been  wiser 
if  he  had  halted  at  the  impromptu  to  which  'Thelyp- 
thora '  first  gave  rise : 

'  If  John  marries  Mary,  and  Mary  alone, 
'Tis  a  very  good  match  between  Mary  and  John. 
Should  John  wed  a  score,  oh,  the  claws  and  the  scratches  ! 
It  can't  be  a  match — 'tis  a  bundle  of  matches.' 

John  Newton,  to  whom  he  sent  these  lines,  'Stern- 
holdized'  (the  word  is  his  own)  the  thought  thus: 

'  What  different  senses  of  that  word,  A  Wife  ! 
It  means  the  comfort  or  the  bane  of  life, 
The  happiest  state  is  to  be  pleased  with  one, 
The  next  degree  is  found  in  having  none.' 

Leigh  Hunt  here  adds  the  colour  to  the  particulars  given 
in  the  note  to  Chapter  V.  of  Elphinstone' s  dress  (p.  114). 
It  was  '  drab.'  The  good  schoolmaster's  objection  to  low 
dresses  has  an  odd  suggestion  of  a  well-known  apostrophe 
in  Moliere : 

'  Couvrez  ce  sein  que  je  ne  saurois  voir; 
Par  de  pareils  objets  les  Ames  sont  blesstes! 

Tartuffe,  Act  iii.  sc.  2. 


206  NOTES 

Elizabeth  Inchbald  (p.  116).     See  note  to  Chapter  VI. 

The  considerable  office  (p.  119)  to  which  the  East  India 
Company  appointed  James  Mill,  was  that  of  second  in  the 
Examiner's  Office,  and  later  on  he  obtained  the  superior 
post  of  Chief  Examiner  of  the  Indian  Correspondence. 

CHAPTER  TEN 

Sir  John  VanbrugKs  (p.  126)  mother  was  a  daughter 
of  Sir  Dudley  Carleton,  and  not  a  French  woman. 
Opinions  will  always  differ  as  to  his  work  as  an 
architect;  and  such  couplets  as  Swift's 

'  We  may  expect  to  see  next  year 
A  mouse-trap  man  chief  engineer ' — 

will  continue  to  be  quoted.  But  Van  'never  wanted  wit,' 
as  Pope  says ;  and  his  plays,  upon  this  ground,  cannot 
become  obsolete.  Miss  Hoyden  and  Lord  Foppington 
(p.  127)  are  characters  in  'The  Relapse,'  re-fashioned  by 
Sheridan  as  'A  Trip  to  Scarborough.' 

William  Cobbett  (p.  128)  lived  where  now  stands  the 
High  Street  Station  of  the  Metropolitan  and  District 
Railway. 

Scarsdale  House  (p.  134)  was  long  in  possession  of  the 
Curzon  family.  Mrs  Richmond  Ritchie,  who  lived  for  a 
time  at  27  Young  Street,  has  reproduced  some  of  the 
details  of  this  ancient  mansion  in  her  delightful  story 
'Old  Kensington'  (1873). 

Dartiquenave  (p.  136).  The  couplet  is  from  Pope's 
'First  Satire  of  the  Second  Book  of  Horace,'  1.  46;  the 
other  quotation  from  Rowe's  imitation  of  Horace's  '  Ne  sit 
ancillse'  (Bk.  ii.  4),—'  The  Lord  Griffin  to  the  Earl  of 
Scarsdale'  ('Poems,'  1757,  ii.  307). 


NOTES  207 


CHAPTER   ELEVEN 

Sir  David  Wilkie  (p.  139),  who,  by  the  way,  was  not 
knighted  until  1836,  lived  at  No.  24  Lower  Phillimore 
Place,  which  he  describes  as  'elegant,  commodious,  and 
very  well  built,'  from  1813  to  1824,  when  his  mother  died. 
She  was  buried  at  Kensington ;  and  in  the  following  year 
he  went  abroad.  At  No.  24  he  painted  '  Blind  Man's  Buff,' 
1  Distraining  for  Rent,'  the  '  Penny  Wedding,'  the  '  Reading 
of  the  Will,'  'the  Chelsea  Pensioners,'  and  the  'Parish 
Beadle.'  In  1837  he  moved  to  Vicarage  Place  (p.  144), 
at  the  head  of  Church  Lane ;  and  this  (according  to 
Wheatley  and  Cunningham,  1891,  ii.  p.  327,  was  known 
later  as  Shaftesbury  House  (p.  144),  that  name  having  been 
given  to  it  by  a  subsequent  resident,  Serjeant  Wilkins,  in 
honour  of  his  birthplace. 

Doctor  Thomas  Frognall  Dibdin  (p.  145)  was  incumbent 
of  St  Mary's,  Bryanston  Square,  a  fact  which  his  book- 
loving  renown  has  obscured. 

Coleridge  (p.  154)  may  have  lodged  in  Edwardes  Square ; 
and  certainly  did  live  at  Hammersmith  (7  Portland  Place) 
with  his  friends  the  Morgans  in  1810  (Dykes  Campbell's 
'Coleridge,' 1894,  p.  180).  At  No.  32  Edwardes  Square, 
Leigh  Hunt  himself  lived  for  eleven  years — i.e.  from  1840 
101851.  (^INTRODUCTION.) 


CHAPTER  TWELVE 

Lord  Holland's  couplet  (p.   161)  is  simple  and  direct ;  but 
as  the  late  Mr  Locker  Lampson  thought  Luttrell's  verses 


208  NOTES 

good  enough  to  give  entire  ('Lyra  Elegantiarum,'   1867, 
p.  280),  his  example  may  be  followed  here : 

'  How  happily  shelter'd  is  he  who  reposes 
In  this  haunt  of  the  poet,  o'ershadow'd  with  roses, 
While  the  sun  is  rejoicing,  unclouded,  on  high, 
And  summer's  full  majesty  reigns  in  the  sky  ! — 

Let  me  in,  and  be  seated — I'll  try  if,  thus  placed, 
I  can  catch  but  one  spark  of  his  feeling  and  taste, 
Can  steal  a  sweet  note  from  his  musical  strain, 
Or  a  ray  of  his  genius  to  kindle  my  brain. 

Well — now  I  am  fairly  install'd  in  the  bower, 
How  lovely  the  scene  !     How  propitious  the  hour  1 
The  breeze  is  perfumed  by  the  hawthorn  it  stirs; 
All  is  beauty  around  me  ; — but  nothing  occurs, 
Not  a  thought,  I  protest,  though  I'm  here  and  alone, 
Not  a  line  can  I  hit  on,  that  Rogers  would  own, 
Though  my  senses  are  ravish'd,  my  feelings  in  tune, 
And  Holland's  my  host,  and  the  season  is  June. 

The  trial  is  ended.     Nor  garden,  nor  grove, 
Though  poets  amid  them  may  linger  or  rove, 
Nor  a  seat  e'en  so  hallow'd  as  this  can  impart 
The  fancy  and  fire  that  must  spring  from  the  heart. 
So  I  rise,  since  the  Muses  continue  to  frown, 
No  more  of  a  poet  than  when  I  sat  down  ; 
While  Rogers,  on  whom  they  look  kindly,  can  strike 
Their  lyre,  at  all  times,  in  all  places,  alike.' 

This  inscription  was  composed  in  June  1818,  and  the 
title  to  the  Holland  couplet  gives  the  exact  position  of 
the  summer-house :  '  On  a  Covered  Seat  in  the  Flower 
Garden  at  Holland  House.' 

The  open  undulating  ground  (p.  163)  is  no  longer 
'  terminated  by  the  Uxbridge  Road,'  as  it  is  now  absorbed 
by  the  rows  of  houses  known  as  '  Holland  Park,  Netting 
Hill.' 


NOTES  209 

Lord  Camelford  (p.  163).  The  duel  between  Lord 
Camelford  and  Captain  Best  took  place  in  1804  'on  the 
site' — says  Mr  Loftie  in  his  'Kensington' — 'of  the  old 
manor-house  of  West  Town,  now  within  the  grounds  of 
Oak  Lodge.' 

Lady  Diana  Rich  (p.  167).  The  scene  of  this  ghost 
story  was  the  Green  Lane,  leading  to  Melbury  Road. 

CHAPTER  THIRTEEN 

The  chamber  in  which  Addison  died  (p.  170),  according 
to  the  Princess  Marie  Liechtenstein  ('  Holland  House,'  1874, 
ii.  p.  77),  was  the  dining-room  on  the  first  floor. 

By  the  same  authority  (ii.  p.  109),  it  is  stated  that 
the  library  (p.  171)  contains  the  green  cloth-covered 
table  which  Addison  had  at  the  Temple,  a  'small  and 
simple'  piece  of  furniture,  'defaced  by  ink  blots.' 
Having  passed  to  his  daughter,  and  afterwards  to 
Lawrence  and  Rogers,  it  was  finally  purchased  at 
Rogers's  sale  by  Henry  Edward,  Lord  Holland,  5th 
May  1856. 

Meditating  his  '  Spectators '  (p.  171).  Leigh  Hunt  seems 
to  have  overlooked  the  fact  that  the  Spectator  and,  for  the 
matter  of  that,  the  Freeholder  mentioned  by  Lord  Holland 
(p.  172),  were  things  of  the  past  when  Addison  lived  at 
Holland  House,  since  he  married  Charlotte,  Countess  of 
Warwick,  on  2nd  August  1716. 

Camoens  (p.  173).  The  Holland  copy  of  the  first 
edition  of  'The  Lusiads,'  1572,  is  more  fully  described 
in  'Holland  House,'  ii.  pp.  176-8.  The  Spanish  inscrip- 
tion is  as  follows  : — '  Que  cosa  mas  lastimosa  que  ver  un 
tan  gran  ingenio  mal  logrado  yo  lo  vi  morir  en  un  hospital 
O 


210  NOTES 

en  Lisboa  sin  tener  una  savana  con  que  cubrirse,  despues 
de  aver  triunfado  en  la  India  Oriental  y  de  aver  navegado 
5500  leguas  por  mar  y  que  aviso  tan  grande  paratos  que  de 
noche  y  de  dia  se  cansan  estudiando  sin  provecho  como 
lo  avana  en  ordir  telas  para  coger  moscas.'  The  book 
belonged  to  Frere,  the  translator  of  Aristophanes,  who 
gave  it  to  Lord  Holland  in  1812. 

The  manuscripts  (p.  174)  are  treated  in  Chapter  XX  VI 1 1. 
of  'Holland  House'  (vol.  ii.  pp.  179-201). 

The  portrait  of  Addison  (p.  175),  which  was  bought  with 
the  table  at  Rogers's  sale  in  1856,  is  not  above  suspicion, 
as  it  has  been  contended  that  it  represents  Swift's  friend, 
Sir  Andrew  Fountaine  ('  Holland  House,'  ii.  pp.  116-7). 

At  the  back  of  the  miniature  of  Robespierre  (p.  175), 
Charles  Fox  had  written — '  un  scelerat,  un  lache  et  un  fou ' 
(ibid.  ii.  p.  121). 

Hogarth's  ' Indian  Emperor'  (p.  176)  was  engraved  in 
1792  by  Robert  Dodd. 

The  grand-niece  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  who  played 
'Alibeck'  (p.  176),  was  little  Miss  Conduitt  (after- 
wards Lady  Lymington),  the  daughter  of  Newton's  niece, 
Catherine  Barton,  who  married  Mr  Conduitt  of  the  Mint 
in  1717.  It  was  at  Mr  Conduitt's  house  that  this  play 
was  performed  in  1731. 

CHAPTER  FOURTEEN 

In  a  former  chapter  (p.  177).     Chapter  the  First. 

The  family  ever  occupied  it  (p.  177).  It  is  very  doubtful 
whether  they  ever  did  so. 

The  family  came  from  Holland  (p.  179).  '  It  is  probable 
that  the  name  is  derived  from  a  little  town,  Ver,  on  the 


NOTES  211 

river  Ver,  below  Coutances,  in  Normandy '  (Loftie's  '  Ken- 
sington,' 1888,  p.  43). 

The  daughter  of  the  last  lord  (p.  181).  Diana  de  Vere, 
second  daughter  of  Aubrey  de  Vere,  twentieth  Earl  of 
Oxford,  married  Charles  Beauclerk,  Duke  of  St  Albans. 

The  Earl's  widow  (p.  184).  Lady  Holland  died  in  1655, 
and  was  buried  in  Kensington  Church  on  September  i. 


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